


I Know What I'm After

by montmorency



Category: Adam Lambert (Musician), Tommy Ratliff (Musician)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2014-01-12
Packaged: 2017-11-22 12:31:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/609854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/montmorency/pseuds/montmorency
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam and his friends are in a band, and their guitarist just ditched them to play for Madonna. Tommy shows up at the audition, but disappears shortly afterwards.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a work-in-progress. It’s done, about 27k words. I’m posting it in seven parts, from now till the New year. I really struggled not to start posting right away. I’m impatient like that. The story is SO much better for not having been posted as a work-in-progress.

I KNOW WHAT I'M AFTER

“He’s gone,” says Isaac. “Might as well get past it.”

Adam pouts. “What a friend. My career is going down the toilet before it ever got started.”

“I’m not going to blame him,” Brian says. “You would have done the same thing in his shoes.”

“As if I would wear his shoes,” Adam scoffs. “He has such shit taste.”

Only Ashley remains silent.

“Whatever.” Isaac waves his hand in front of their faces. “Focus, guys, we can’t blow this gig and we need a fucking guitarist, like, yesterday. We need a new band name, we need a fresh start.”

“What’s wrong with the band name?” asks Brian.

“Nothing. A new name would show we’re a new lineup is all.”

Adam slouches further in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. Life sucks. The remaining members of the band are sitting in this warehouse-like space that belongs to a friend of Isaac’s, somewhere in east L.A., in a semi-circle of rickety folding chairs. A clown school’s worth of badly stylized guitarists has paraded in front of them for three hours now. It doesn’t help that Monte was a technically skilled guitarist and it’s hard to compete with that – or replace it. Still, by now surely one of the wanna-be rockers would have been a reasonable substitute.

But no. Monte had to leave the band two measly weeks from their biggest, most important gig ever, because somehow he’d managed to hook up with Madonna – fuckin’ _Madonna_ – and become one of her guitarists, and her tour started two days ago.

“How many more are out there?” Brian asks Isaac’s friend Matt, who is acting as production assistant.

Matt opens the door a smidge and peers out, then closes it. “Looks like one more.”

“Thank fuck,” Isaac says. “I’m getting hungry.”

Adam shushes Isaac and asks Matt, “Promising?” 

Matt shrugs. “Try scrawny and underfed. Possibly underwashed as well.”

“Show him in, let’s get this over with,” Brian says. “Then it’s dinner time.”

Isaac pumps his fist and gets a glare from Adam.

Matt wasn’t kidding. The kid who nervously shuffles in the door is tiny, his eyes huge and scared in his small, pretty face. His Metallica t-shirt is tatty and his jeans have holes. Even his guitar looks worn out and tired.

“What’s your name?” Brian calls out across the space.

“Tommy Joe. Tommy,” says the kid, picking up the cable jack from the floor and plugging it into his guitar. 

“Whatcha gonna play for us?”

“ _Enter Sandman?_ ” The kid is so diffident, clearly struggling to appear confident. 

“We’re not a metal band,” Adam says.

“Can it, dude,” Brian warns Adam. “Go for it, Tommy.”

Tommy Joe hangs his head, bangs obscuring his eyes, and starts the opening bars. He stops and looks at the amp, then at the semi-circle of people questioningly.

“Go ahead,” Brian offers.

Tommy tweaks a couple of knobs, strums, adjusts more, and then settles, hair in his eyes again. This time it sounds just right. He nails the thing, getting so into the vibe that he stops noticing that he’s not alone. Then he segues into Buddy Guy-like skanky blues.

Adam looks over at Brian and Isaac. They’re nodding at each other. Isaac’s starting to grin like a maniac.

 _He’s very good_ , Ashley mouths at Adam. Adam raises his eyebrows. She nods, _No question about it._

“You can stop now!” Brian hollers.

Tommy looks up, hand poised mid-air; the wailing sounds from the amp fade away. He looks apprehensively at the four of them, fists clenching and unclenching.

“What else ya got?” Brian asks. 

Tommy bites his lip, then strikes a chord. “Funk? I can do funk.”

“Impress me, baby,” Brian says.

Tommy bangs out some hot P-Funk riffs. 

“Okay, stop!” Brian hollers again. “Badass!”

Tommy looks up hopefully and it goes right to Adam’s downstairs brain. He can’t help it. Under the ratty old clothes and the scared face, the kid is adorable and exactly Adam’s type because, yes, Adam has a type: tiny, pretty, slim-hipped, with a beautiful mouth. But how old is this kid? He looks sixteen. That won’t do. They play bars and nightclubs, mostly.

Tommy is unplugging his guitar and crouching to lay the jack on the floor respectfully when Adam asks his age. Tommy straightens and grips his guitar tightly. His hands are full of tension. “Twenty-one.”

Adam is surprised. Tommy looks about sixteen, but if he’s twenty-one, then he’s only four years younger than Adam. In fact all the band members are in the low or mid-twenties, now that Monte is gone. Monte hit the big three-oh half a year back. Monte even has a wife and two kids. In a way, he never fit in that well; his priorities too different – his children, his need to have a permanent home. So the group is more cohesive without him except for one problem. No guitar player.

Tommy’s eyes dart between Brian and Adam, as though he’s trying to decide who’s in charge here. 

Adam asks, “Why’d you come to our audition?”

Tommy fidgets with his guitar strap. “Everybody knows what happened with Pittman, and lots of people figure you guys are going somewhere, so…” The thought drifts off.

“Been to our gigs?” Brian asks.

Tommy shakes his head no. “But I heard,” he insists. “I was meaning to.”

“Have you played with other bands?” Isaac puts in, leaning forward.

Tommy shakes his head no.

“But you’ve jammed with people?”

“Yeah, um, friends.”

“There’s a dynamic to playing in a group,” Brian says. “Takes practice to hit that sweet spot where everybody’s playing like a unit. Doesn’t come without time and work.”

Tommy hitches up his pants. His knuckles are practically white on the guitar neck now. “I can work hard. I know how to do that.”

“Sure, course you can, it’s just there’s an important show we’re doing very soon.”

“Okay,” says Tommy. “I get that.”

It’s a little uncomfortable for a moment.

Brian nods. “Sweet guitar, where’d you find it?”

Tommy grips the neck of the beat-up Jaguar a bit harder. “I bought it from a guy in Alameda.” He doesn’t elaborate.

“Okay, gotcha. Hey, Matt, can you show Tommy out, okay?”

As soon as the door closes, they huddle.

“Kid’s got game,” Brian begins.

“His hair is very pink,” Isaac adds.

“So?” Ashley asks. “I think he looks cool.”

“He’s gorgeous,” Adam blurts out.

They laugh.

“Down, boy,” Brian says, not unkindly. “Settle, people. Even though he’s talented, I think he’s too shy to go on stage.”

“I’m shy,” Ashley says. “I deal. It’s not like I have to be the one out front of the band – that’s Adam. It’s not that hard to hang in the back and just play.”

Brian makes a goofy face at her. “What was all that I was just saying about how much effort it takes to play together? Was I talking to myself?”

Ashley makes a face back at him.

Isaac holds up his hand. “He’s the best we saw today in terms of playing skills.”

Brian nods his head. “But hey; that one guy with the attitude? He’d survive a live gig better.”

The other three exchange looks. Isaac speaks up for them: “Talent talks. Bullshit walks. We like the one who plays best.”

Brian looks over at Adam. “What do you think?”

Adam throws up his hands. “I don’t play instruments. I trust you guys to make the call on this one.”

In the end they bicker more, review the recordings they made during the auditions, decide they might give Tommy a chance, and ask Matt for the list of contact information for the guitarists who auditioned. The only missing information is for Tommy.

“I didn’t get a number from him,” Matt says, shrugging.

“What the fuck?” asks Isaac.

“He said he doesn’t have a phone.”

They stare at each other like they’ve never heard anything so bizarre in their young lives.

“What is he, an alien?” Ashley offers. “Who doesn’t have a cell?”

“Email? Anything?” asks Brian.

“Nope,” says Matt. 

“What’s his last name?” Adam asks.

Matt checks the sign-in list. “He didn’t leave one. Unless Joe is his last name.”

“Then how are we going to hire him?” Adam wants to know.

Matt brightens. “He said he’d call me back to find out the outcome.”

* * *

Tommy never calls back. They hire the guitarist with the attitude, one Trevor Bowman. They put in lots of practice, in between their regular jobs. Trevor is okay but he definitely has attitude, as in too much of it. Too diva. Really good-looking and he knows it. Not that he doesn’t work hard on the songs, because he does, but his stage presence is a bit overwhelming, especially for Adam, who’s used to being the main man out front.

“Guitarists are allowed to be divas, too,” Isaac says privately to Adam, slapping his shoulder. “You can handle the competition, big guy.”

Two weeks later, their important gig goes okay but not great. They’re not setting anyone on fire yet, and they still haven’t thought up a new band name. They use the old one for now, since they’re known by it.

Brian drives Adam back to his apartment after the gig. Ashley’s in the back seat; she’ll be the second drop-off. Brian has a reliable car because he has a real job as a software designer and makes more money than the others. Adam’s car is in the shop, getting a leaking brake line fixed. Ashley has a bicycle. There’s no way she can be expected to pedal around with that giant bass guitar on her back.

“I’m lining up the next big gig,” Brian says. “My cousin who knows that guy in the business? He knows a guy who knows a different company and he’s gonna try to hook us up. Maybe a month or two.”

Adam nods, his arm propped in the open passenger window. “Wish that Tommy had called back.”

“No regrets, it was his call. He dropped us, not the other way around.”

Adam heaves a huge sigh. “He looked like he was in trouble, maybe; did you guys notice?”

Ashley leans forward, her chin resting on the back of Adam’s seat. “He was skinny for sure. I didn’t get the sense he’s a tweaker or anything, though.”

“I feel bad,” Adam continues. “I wish I could have taken him somewhere for a meal, you know? Looked like he needed it.”

Brian reaches over to slap Adam’s chest. “Not your fault, man. If he really wanted to play, he should have called.”

“Might be hard if you don’t have a phone,” says Adam, unsatisfied. He’s been keeping his eye on the local gigs, wondering if Tommy got a job with some other band.

* * *

As soon as Adam’s car is back in the rotation, Brian has the unmitigated gall to send him – like an errand boy! – to Sam Ash for spare cables and strange items like strap locks and vacuum tubes. It’s not Adam’s thing to go into guitar or music stores. He tends to buy sheet music online and let Isaac and Ashley and Brian deal with the hardware needed for shows – the mics and cables and stands and in-ears and mixers and amps. To be entirely fair (not that Adam feels like being fair right now), Brian has that pesky well-paying day job and he’s been generous, buying a lot of stuff for the band, so Adam darkens the door of Sam Ash, a couple hundred of Brian’s folding green in his wallet.

The store is gigantic and he solicits help from a willing clerk, who drags him around the store to fulfill Brian’s shopping list.

Passing the closed door of a practice room full of amplifiers, Adam hears what has got to be a bluesy rendition of _Enter Sandman_. He peers into the room. It’s dark-ish, with a lot of empty space, amps lining the walls and shelves. There’s just one person in there, sitting on a stool and playing a guitar, in profile. 

“Hey,” Adam says to the clerk, “who is that?” He recognizes Tommy immediately but wants to get information from the clerk.

“Tommy?” The clerk stops. “Tommy comes in a lot to use the amp rooms.”

“How come?”

“I don’t think he has anywhere to stay so he doesn’t have an amp.”

“You mean homeless?”

The clerk nods and shrugs.

“The store owner doesn’t mind? You just let him play?”

The clerk grins. “Why not? It’s good for the store, guys come in here and what do they want? To be Hetfield or Hendrix. So if they hear some high-quality jamming, that tends to sell guitars, you know?”

Adam nods. “Do you know his name?”

“Tommy,” the clerk repeats.

“I mean last name.”

“Nope. He buys strings sometimes but he’s not in the customer database. Always uses cash.”

Adam follows the clerk to the register and pays, accepting a bag. He’s about to leave when he thinks again and goes back into the store. Fortunately the clerk has already found another customer, and doesn’t see Adam heading to the store’s interior.

He opens the door to the sound room quietly. It’s not hard since Tommy is clearly focused on playing. Adam closes the door with a soft snick and levers himself onto a stool, still mostly out of Tommy’s line of vision.

Adam can judge the kind of music he likes. No, he doesn’t play an instrument – other than his voice, which, thank you, IS an instrument – but he knows enough to understand that Tommy is good at it, even if he’s not playing Adam’s favorite style of music. Tommy seems more into rock and rhythm and blues than pop. No matter. Everyone in the band has a different style and they have an agreement that everyone can do side projects, so long as the band comes first.

When Tommy stops playing for a moment, he hears Adam shuffling around on the stool behind him and nearly jumps out of his skin, turning and standing and then nearly stumbling backwards, the Jaguar clutched in front of himself like a shield.

“How long have you been there?” he asks nervously.

Adam smiles as brightly as he can. Tommy still looks ragged and ill-fed. There are haggard circles under his eyes. His hair is still pink, but faded. Adam wants nothing so much as to feed him. Maybe he needs a bath, too. And a good long nap.

“Not long,” Adam says. “But I could have listened for hours.”

Tommy blushes.

“I’m serious,” Adam assures him. “Why didn’t you call back?”

“I could tell you guys weren’t going to pick me,” Tommy says, standing his ground uncertainly. Adam is between him and the door.

Adam shakes his head. “We had to discuss things, but in the end we decided on you.”

Tommy’s eyes open comically wide.

Adam drags out his phone and checks the time. “It’s past five. Are you hungry?”

Tommy bites his bottom lip. “No, I have to go.” He yanks the cord out of his guitar and it drops to the floor.

Adam is disappointed. His ploy isn’t working. “Come on, just something quick nearby. Burger? Tacos? My treat.”

Tommy hesitates. “I don’t need charity.” He’s still blocked from the exit, especially when Adam stands up and moves closer. Tommy leans over to zip the Jaguar into a battered gig bag.

“Come on,” Adam repeats. “It’s not charity, I just want to treat you. As a thank you for auditioning.”

Tommy straightens and hefts the guitar over his shoulder. “But you must have picked somebody else.”

“Who cares?” Adam asks. “Water under the bridge. I just want to talk.”

Tommy takes a small step forward, notices that Adam doesn’t budge, and then looks longingly at the door. “I have to go, please,” he says.

Adam curses inwardly but opens the door and holds it for Tommy, who scampers through it with a backward, largely unreadable, glance at Adam.

* * *

Adam’s not a perfect person. He’s also not much for stealth but he follows Tommy out of the music store, staying a block behind. He wants to know where Tommy is going. He wants to know Tommy is okay. He still has the worst possible feeling about Tommy not having what he needs to survive decently. Adam had a good upbringing and he even has his own tiny studio apartment in a reasonable area of Hollywood. His dad helps with a check now and then. He’s never had to live anywhere especially dangerous. He knows damn well if he can’t make it here, his parents will willingly take him back in until he finds what they would call a real job. They would probably front him more money to give college another try. All that said, Adam’s well aware that not everyone is that lucky, and that there are young kids all over L.A. who don’t have the basics, who maybe have to worry about where a meal is coming from.

It’s not at all that Tommy’s so cute; he’s also polite and sweet and definitely a little enigma, all of which is attractive to Adam. He’d like to talk with Tommy, just sit down and talk and learn more about him. 

He _needs_ to know that Tommy is okay.

Sure enough, five more blocks and Tommy walks into St. Paul’s, a church with an attached homeless center. That reminds Adam of the other emotion that Tommy brings forth in Adam, a desire to protect. All his life, Adam’s brother Neil has mocked him for befriending stray dogs or sticking up for kids that were bullied in school. It’s part of him now and he’s not going to change. He doesn’t especially want to change. If caring about people and animals is stupid, well, Adam will wear that label without shame.

The center looks like someone cares about making it nice. The paint on the walls may need updating, but it’s sturdy. It looks safe. At least now he knows that Tommy will be okay tonight. He walks back to where he parked his car and slings the bag of purchases into the passenger seat. He blows his bangs out of his eyes – the cheap product he uses is losing its hold – and dials up Isaac. “Hey, I found that kid,” he says. “Totes by accident.”

* * *

It’s a good thing that Adam has a night job instead of a day job. He sings three nights a week in a chorus of an off-Broadway-style musical that plays downtown. That leaves him lots of free time during the business day.

The Sam Ash clerk is surprised to see Adam browsing every afternoon in the store. “We have a great sale on mics,” the guy says, after Adam admits to being a vocalist, not an instrumentalist. After a week of this, and no Tommy, Adam asks outright.

“Tommy? Sometimes he haunts Guitar Center instead,” the clerk says.

Duh. Adam could smack his own forehead. Guitar Center is a few doors away. They probably feel the same way as Sam Ash and let Tommy play at will.

The big sound room deep inside Guitar Center has an open door; he can hear the sound and follows it through a maze of equipment. The amp is turned politely low but yes, that’s Tommy, who turns when he hears someone coming.

“Please,” Adam says. “Please. Just tacos, okay?”

Tommy raises one eyebrow. That’s a skill Adam admires since he himself has never perfected it. “You’re kind of a pain, you know that?” Tommy says.

“I’m persistent,” Adam corrects with a big smile. “Come on, it’s just tacos.”

 

* * *

Adam convinces Tommy to take a ride in his car and they drive to El Cholo downtown, after stowing Tommy’s guitar in the trunk. If nothing else, the place has awesome margaritas. Tommy certainly seems hungry: he easily plows through a gigantic combination plate that Adam pressed him to order. 

“My mom always said I have a hollow leg,” Tommy says, muffled through a mouthful of quesadilla.

Adam can’t eat his whole plate. He wishes he could, but he was chubby in high school and it took a lot of work to get into relatively decent shape, so he doesn’t want to backslide. “Want mine? I have to stop, I’m on a diet.”

Tommy looks up, a fork poised. “Why? You look great.” But his eyes are on the Spanish rice and tamales festooning Adam’s plate, so Adam pushes it over. If he can’t enjoy eating it himself, he can enjoy watching Tommy eat it.

“How long have you been playing guitar, Tommy?”

Tommy stops eating for a moment and calculates. “Eight years.”

“I’ve been singing in musicals since I was in middle school. I have – had the greatest voice teacher back in San Diego. She was amazing. She’s the one who convinced me I had a career in music if I worked at it.”

“I never had any lessons,” Tommy says. “My uncle gave me an old guitar and a way cheap amp that he didn’t want any more. He showed me a few chords.”

“Didn’t your parents want you to have lessons?” Adam asks. He can’t imagine if his parents hadn’t stepped up to the plate and changed his life by getting him involved in theater and music back in school. He’d been a lonely little kid acting out before they did that.

Tommy slurps his soda and shakes his head. “Too expensive.”

Adam looks down at his food. He could kick himself for thoughtlessness. Sometimes he forgets how lucky he was, compared to some. He looks up, determinedly shifting the topic. “You want to make a career of music? I sure do. It’s not easy; we’ve been trying for a couple of years before Monte screwed us over.”

“Pittman’s pretty great,” Tommy agrees. He’s still working on what’s left on the plate. He hasn’t slowed down since he started eating. Adam is a little worried he might explode.

“Well, he screwed us good and proper. What a fucker.” Adam exhales wearily. “It’s not like I don’t work in music already, singing in the chorus in some shows, and it pays the rent, not gonna lie, but it’s not the same as doing my own music.”

Tommy is staring at him now. “You sing in a chorus?”

“Yeah, cool, huh? I mean, they pay me to do it. So that’s good. But like I said… anyway that’s my day job, so to speak. I can’t wait till I can quit it and put everything into the band and writing songs.”

“That’s so cool, that you get paid to do music.”

“I’m very lucky,” Adam agrees. “Believe me, I know it. What’s your day job?”

Tommy shrugs. 

“Did you go to college?” Adam has to ask, but he thinks he’s never seen a kid who looks less like he’d be interested in college.

“I wasn’t any good at school so my parents took me out and taught me.”

“You live with them?” Adam asks. He can’t help delving further into the mystery of Tommy.

Tommy looks suspicious. “No.”

“Do you work somewhere?” Adam tries again.

Tommy looks like he’s being grilled and he doesn’t like it but isn’t sure how to make it stop. “I help a friend who delivers water softeners and shit like that. He pays me what he can.”

Adam leans back in his chair. It seems wrong. Tommy’s clearly meant to be a musician. He feels like shit that the band didn’t grab him immediately, instead letting him get away. Not that the band is making money or anything, but they sure as fuck have plans to turn this into a paying thing. They’re after an album contract and Adam, for one, is fucking sure he’s going to do everything he has to in order to make it happen. Tommy should be with them. Then he could make sure Tommy’s okay.

Unfortunately, Tommy isn’t getting with Adam’s program. Tommy wants to be left right where he is when they’re done. Adam tries to give him a ride and Tommy insists he’s going to catch a bus. At last Adam convinces him to be dropped off near the Guitar Center. Tommy still doesn’t tell Adam where he lives, or where he’s going the minute Adam drives off.

Idling in a free parking space near the corner of Sunset and North Vista, Adam pops the trunk and looks over at Tommy. “I’d ask for your phone number,” he begins, “but you probably haven’t got a phone still…?”

“No,” Tommy says. “Thanks for everything.”

“How can I see you again?”

“Why?” Tommy sounds mystified.

Adam thinks fast. He’s worried about Tommy now, but Tommy has some pride and it’s not Adam’s business to make Tommy feel like a child. “What if Trevor quits the band? It could happen.”

“He’d be an idiot.” Tommy climbs out of the car.

Adam lurches into action and gets out and meets Tommy at the open trunk. “Tommy, I just – I like you. How about, say, dinner again? Do you like movies?”

Tommy retrieves his guitar bag and slings it over his shoulder. “You mean a date?”

Adam’s eyebrows go up. Apparently, he’s being pretty transparent. “Would that be bad?”

“It’s not a good time for me to do that,” Tommy says. “It’s complicated.”

“I could make it simple. Just friends.”

“It’s too complicated,” Tommy insists. “I can’t.”

* * *

Once he lets Tommy go, Adam drops his ass back into the driver’s seat and puts the car in gear. At the last moment he had shoved a card with his cell phone number into the pocket of Tommy’s jacket: _Just in case,_ he had said firmly. He wonders if Tommy is going to the church shelter again. He wants to follow Tommy at a distance and make sure he’s okay.

But that’s not fair. Tommy’s grown up and doesn’t deserve that. Adam’s father used to tell him sometimes in life, you have to let something go. You can’t force the world to come to you. Adam grimaces. Dad was right. As usual. As annoying as it is to admit that.


	2. Chapter 2

The band does improve and Brian finds them more gigs, some even at decent places like The Mint and Hotel Café. They share the night with other bands – whatever it takes, that’s their mantra. Persistence will pay off.

Trevor is working out decently as a guitarist, more or less. He’s reliable, he knows the music cold when he arrives at practice and at gigs. Something’s missing, though.

“Monte could work out a part better,” Brian confides to Adam as they take a break, sitting on rickety chairs in the parking lot outside their makeshift practice studio. It’s a bright sunny afternoon, one of those gorgeous Southern California days that Adam loves. The beers lifted from the mini-fridge indoors are cold and inviting.

“Monte’s a fucking douche,” Adam grouses.

“He was a talented douche,” Brian says. “Give the man his due.”

“Not in the mood to. By now we might have had a contract, Brian, you know that?”

Brian makes a so-so gesture with his hand. “Maybe, maybe not. Look at it this way, we’re gonna make it anyway, and we won’t have to deal with his ego.”

Adam looks over at Trevor, across the parking lot, yapping away on his cell phone. “We need fresh songs and it’s not working with him. I can’t write songs with him.”

“Don’t look at me,” Brian says, hands up. “If I could I would.”

“You could try harder.”

Brian shakes his head vigorously. “If I had that skill, we’d both know it. I don’t. Nothing to be done about it.”

Adam frowns. “Isaac and Ash don’t write, either. We’re fucked.”

“Let’s take it one step at a time,” Brian says. “One gig at a time. We’ll get there. Have faith, bro.”

Isaac shuffles over, dragging a chair, and plops down next to them. “What up, dudes?” He pops a beer tab and takes a long swig.

“We’re having a family fight over the dick who left.”

Isaac looks like he’s sorry he put his chair down here. He moves to get up, but Brian puts a hand on his shoulder and holds him in place.

“You stay. You got another ten minutes, then back inside. I’mma check the sound system.” Brian saunters back towards the studio.

“You don’t much like Trevor, do you?” asks Isaac.

Adam sets down his empty beer bottle and drops his head to his knees, massaging through his thick hair with his hands. Muffled, he says, “Fuck my life.”

Isaac takes another swig of beer and stretches his legs out as far as possible, sliding down in the chair. “It’s not that bad. You’re doing what you love for a living.”

Adam makes a grumpy noise. 

“What’s your fucking complaint?” Isaac asks, holding the cold, sweating beer can against his neck.

“Don’t laugh at me,” Adam says, “but I still wish we had managed to snag Tommy for the band.”

“No point crying over spilled beer.”

“At least you’re not laughing at me. Thanks for that, by the way.”

Isaac pets Adam’s head with his free hand. “I thought you found him?”

“I did. And then I lost him again.”

“Careless of you.”

Adam groans. “He stopped going to Sam Ash and Guitar Center. Probably because of me. He must have thought I was stalking him.”

“Weren’t you?” 

“No, as it happens I was not stalking him,” Adam musters the dignity to say. “I’m worried about him.”

“Because he’s homeless?”

Adam had told Isaac a bit about his interactions with Tommy. They had also agreed that there was nothing they could do now that Trevor was in their band. It wouldn’t be fair to drop him. Also, if Tommy couldn’t bother to have a cell phone or call back when he said he would, how reliable would he be in a band?

“Yeah,” Adam says. “He seemed so, I don’t know, like he needed help.”

“There’s nothing you can do, Adam. Whatever his problem is, you didn’t create it.” Isaac looks into the distance, where eucalyptus trees wave against the blue sky. “Don’t worry about him, I’m sure he’s okay. You said he goes to the church shelter place, right? He’ll be okay. Someone’s taking care of him.”

“You think so?”

“I think so,” Isaac says, patting Adam’s back awkwardly, but even Isaac doesn’t look all that convinced. “What’s your choice here? If he doesn’t want your help, you can’t force it on him.”

Adam knows he’s not responsible. He knows there are kind people who help the homeless of Los Angeles. That doesn’t stop him from thinking about the scrawny kid, or wanting to be the one taking care of him. Whatever Tommy is running from, Adam is pretty sure it’s not Tommy’s fault. One thing he’s sure of: Tommy is sweet. Tommy wouldn’t do anything wrong. Well, except maybe boost guitar strings when he has no money. He could picture Tommy doing that, but nothing worse than that.

 

* * *

The next day, out of the blue, Trevor quits on them. By text, the chickenshit. Looks like he found a better band. The remaining band members regroup at the studio to vent their frustrations and, after an hour or so of this, to discuss what to do. 

“Why not hire Tommy Joe now?” Ashley says. “I heard Adam ran into him somewhere.” She looks over at Adam.

Adam gestures wildly. “And then I lost him again!”

Isaac shrugs, an _I know, right?_ gesture.

“Lame,” Brian throws in. “Now we’re extra fucked. I fucking hate running auditions.”

Adam agrees to seek out Tommy one more time. If he fails, they’ll set up another audition. Musicians all over the L.A. basin are going to know they’ve been abandoned twice. It sucks but time is important, so they agree he gets one week to find Tommy.

There are too many guitar stores and too many shelters in Los Angeles and environs. Adam tries a few other Guitar Centers – West Pico, Pasadena, Ventura – to ask about a kid with a beat-up Jaguar (Brian had identified it for him) and maybe pale-pink hair, since it was fading last time he saw Tommy, but no one has seen him. In addition to everything else, Adam feels guilty that he might have chased Tommy away from the only thing he enjoyed.

Remembering that Tommy had answered a classified in the _L.A. Reader_ for their audition, Adam reviews all the paper’s audition notices carefully. He even hovers outside around one or two auditions where they’re looking for a lead guitarist. That doesn’t pan out, either.

After the agreed-upon week of in-depth searching he finally throws in the towel. Tommy could have hitched a ride out of L.A. altogether, for all Adam knows. Brian puts out an audition notice for the upcoming Wednesday evening.

So on Tuesday night – or rather Wednesday morning – at 2:14 a.m. when Adam’s cell phone jangles next to his bed, it scares the shit out of him. He comes from a stable family and no one ever, but ever, calls at that hour. His hand slaps around the bedside table until it connects with the phone. He checks its lit-up face but doesn’t recognize the number.

“Whu?” he mumbles into the phone, pressing it to his ear.

“Adam?” The voice is small and soft, tentative.

“Who is this?”

“I – Adam?” the voice says. It’s Tommy.

“Tommy? Tommy!” Adam yelps, sitting up, wrestling furiously with the sheets tangling around his legs and waist. “Fuck!” he mutters.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have called.”

“What? No! Tommy, don’t you dare hang –“

Too late, the line is dead.

Adam punches redial immediately. It rings and rings.

He curses and redials again. “God fucking damn it, Tommy,” Adam mutters to himself. “Pick up the fucking phone.”

This time after several rings, the line connects again.

“You need help, don’t you? Let me help you,” Adam says fast. “Where are you? I’ll come right now.”

Adam can almost physically feel the hesitation through the phone. He hears soft breathing. “Please, Tommy, please let me help you. Please.” One thing he knows: if it weren’t urgent, Tommy would never have called him. It’s got to be bad.

“Okay,” Tommy’s voice says quietly.

“Where are you?” Adam tries to keep the panic out of his voice, but he _cannot_ let Tommy get away again and doesn’t care how much he sounds like he’s begging, because he is. “Please, Tommy. Please. Just tell me.”

* * *

Adam throws on enough clothing to be decent, then a few more layers for good effect, drags on his combat boots without lacing them, grabs phone and keys and leaves the apartment as quietly as he can, hoping not to wake his neighbors. He finds his dew-covered car parked at the curbside, gets in and races over the hill to a run-down neighborhood in Burbank not far from the airport. Tommy is sitting on the curb at a dark intersection. If Tommy hadn’t instructed him to stop at that corner, Adam would never have seen him.

He pulls to the side of the street and reaches over to open the door. Tommy rises to his feet stiffly, or so it looks to Adam, and shuffles to the car and slips in, barely causing it to bounce when he sits down. He closes the passenger door as softly as he can and sits quietly.

That’s got Adam on the near side of frustrated. It’s well past midnight and he just drove for half an hour, risking a very expensive speeding ticket, and now Tommy doesn’t say a thing?

“Are you okay? What happened, can you tell me?” he asks, angled towards Tommy.

Tommy turns to look at him, his eyes glittering a little in the dim light. Something looks wrong about his face but it’s too dark to see much. “Please just – drive,” Tommy says.

“Tell me what happened.”

“Drive first,” Tommy insists. 

Headlights turning the corner sweep a beam of light into Adam’s car and Tommy slides down out of sight, but not before Adam notices a bruise on his cheek that the headlights illuminate for a split second. “ Please,” Tommy begs.

The car is past them now; Adam checks it out in the rear-view mirror. The car stops, brake lights bright red. Adam puts his car in drive and pulls away from the curb, still glancing now and then in the mirror. The other car appears to sit there, brake lights shining. A few more blocks and Adam turns to head back to the main drag. 

“Seat belt,” Adam says once he’s on Vanowen, waiting till Tommy complies. “Where are we going?”

“I don’t know,” Tommy says, sounding miserable. “You said to call. If I needed something.”

Adam thinks but no brilliant idea is manifesting itself. He shouldn’t take Tommy to his own apartment. For one thing it’s tiny, for another he feels like he might need some help dealing with whatever this is. Tommy’s in some kind of trouble and Adam isn’t used to dealing with trouble. His upbringing was pretty much drama-free. He used to think his family was dull, but now he’s kind of grateful. “Tommy, I’m glad you called. Did you get a phone?”

Tommy shakes his head.

“No? You called from someone else’s phone?” When there’s no answer, not even a gesture that he can see peripherally, he takes his eyes from the street for a moment and looks over. “Tommy?” 

“Can you just take me to the Strip and leave me there?”

“No way I’m dumping you on a seedy Hollywood street corner.” 

Tommy slumps further. He’s skinny enough to slide down even with the seat belt hooked up. 

Adam comes to a decision. Isaac and Sophie are going to hate him, but it’s the wee hours of a Wednesday morning and this is the only idea he has. He turns the car in the direction of Valley Village and thumbs at his phone.

Isaac and Sophie are too tired to be mad, and also they’re awesome like that – they’ll do anything for anyone. They open the door to their roomy one-bedroom, second-floor apartment, rubbing the sleep from their eyes. They welcome Tommy inside without so much as a surprised look. He slinks in like a cat that isn’t sure whether there are disapproving dogs on the premises. They sit him down at the eat-in kitchen table, keeping the lights low because no one is quite awake yet, and Isaac puts on a tea kettle while Sophie checks on Tommy’s face.

“Nice shiner,” she says. “We need an ice pack.”

Adam sits across from Tommy while Sophie gets ice cubes and a plastic bag and a clean kitchen towel and Isaac finds mismatched coffee mugs and teacups.

“Can you tell me what happened?” Adam asks.

Tommy’s eyes shift to the two people moving around the kitchen.

“You can trust Sophie and Isaac. I’ve known them forever. Come on, Tommy, I need to know who did that to you. You know I’m going to smack the shit out of someone.” He tries to make it light. Tommy chews on his lips as though he’s trying to hide a smile. “Oh come on, you know I’m butch, I could so do it,” Adam says. “You called me from wherever it was, yeah?” He holds up his phone and wiggles it at Tommy. “I have the number right in here.”

Tommy looks impressed at Adam’s investigational skills. Also worried. “My dad is, like, a preacher.”

That’s random, thinks Adam.

“Is he the one who did that?”

Tommy shakes his head. “I mean, him and Mom want me back but he doesn’t get his hands dirty.”

“So who did that?”

Tommy turns away.

Sophie drags up a chair to sit close to Tommy and presses the make-shift ice bag to his cheek. “Hold it there,” she says softly.

“Tommy, I don’t get it. You’re twenty-one, you should be on your own,” Adam speaks carefully, not wanting to send Tommy back into his shell where he won’t talk. He wonders if Tommy really isn’t twenty-one. “It’s not their business to interfere with your life now that you’re an adult.”

“They’re kind of strict,” Tommy says, wrapping his hands around the mug of hot tea that Isaac puts in front of him. “Thanks,” he says softly to Isaac, who plops his ass in the fourth chair around the table.

The story spills out slowly, what with Tommy’s intense reluctance, but Adam is persistent, and Sophie puts a light hand on Tommy’s forearm where it lies on the table and leaves it there, comfortingly.

The story is weird and disturbing, utterly unlike Adam’s own experiences growing up. Tommy’s parents run a strange church in the Valley and Tommy never fit in and never wanted to. It’s like he was an alien child born to these strange people who are nothing like him. It’s been a contentious subject forever, and Tommy spent time being home-schooled when he wanted to go to public school. He finally left them five years ago, not letting them know where he went. He’s stayed under the radar since then, never getting a real job, not able to afford a phone or anywhere regular to stay.

In the end, it’s four a.m. and Adam doesn’t even know what to say. His own experiences in school were difficult, given that he was in the closet and had no friends he knew were gay. That was stressful, but when he told his mom at last, instead of freaking out like he had worried might happen, she was totally cool about it. His dad was the same. They had been waiting for him to tell them in his own way. They made it clear that they loved him no matter what; but more than that, they thought it was wonderful that he was gay, that it was a part of _him_ and therefore they thought it was awesome. So long as he was happy, that was truly all that mattered to them. He says a small nonsectarian prayer inside to thank his parents for being so rad.

Tommy, though, that is something else. He can never go back there. Not if Adam has anything to say about it. Now’s not the time, though: Tommy’s exhausted, everyone is tired, and thank fuck Adam doesn’t have to work until six p.m. tomorrow night. Damn musical.

Sophie fluffs a fresh cotton sheet over the long sofa. “This thing is deliciously comfortable to sleep on. When Isaac snores I just sleep out here,” she says.

“For me?” asks Tommy.

Sophie laughs, a cute little girly laugh. “Of course for you, silly. Come here,” and she drags him into her own skinny arms and hugs him fiercely tight. “Although maybe a shower is in order first. Isaac, you and Tommy are both twinky little guys, I’m sure he’ll fit in something of yours.” She doesn’t let go of Tommy, and eventually he puts his arms around her, too, as if unsure.

Adam is totally jealous. He wants to hug Tommy. It’s so obvious that Tommy isn’t used to being hugged and that he deserves to be hugged, and Adam wants to be the one doing the hugging. But Sophie beat him to it. He frowns at her behind Tommy’s back. She just giggles again.

“Get over here, group hug!” she calls. “Isaac!”

From the hallway comes a voice: “What?”

Adam doesn’t need a second invitation and Isaac pops his head back into the living room; in another moment all four of them are hugging each other in a big circle. Adam gets an arm around Tommy and squeezes. Tommy makes a pathetic whimpering sound.

They pull apart. “You okay?” asks Isaac.

Tommy’s arm is tender. Adam coaxes the cheap polyester windbreaker off; sure enough there’s a large bruise on his upper arm.

Adam gets mad all over again. “This is going to stop now!” he announces. 

Tommy flinches at the harsh tone.

Sophie shoots a death glare at Adam. “Tommy,” she says, turning to him, “I think maybe we ought to take you to a hospital.”

Tommy shakes his head vigorously. “I’m okay, don’t need that.”

“You got hit on your head, that’s serious.”

“Just a bruise.”

“Did you black out?”

“No.”

Adam looks grumpy. “I say we do the hospital thing.”

“I don’t have insurance,” Tommy counters.

“UCLA takes everyone,” Isaac says. 

Tommy shakes his head again.

“Tommy…” Adam says warningly.

Isaac gets between Adam and Tommy. “Hey, big guy, if he didn’t black out, I agree with Tommy, he’s okay. In a day, if it’s worse, we go to UCLA med center, okay?”

Sophie nods. “We all need some sleep right now. Do not scorn the cozy little bed I made on the sofa.” She takes Tommy’s hand and guides him to the sofa. “Let’s worry about the shower after a good rest.” She leaves him there and clicks off the light that’s near the front door.

“What about me?” Adam asks.

“Hold on,” Isaac says, disappearing into the hallway to the bedroom and bathroom and reappearing with a Thermalite pad. It inflates itself nicely and Isaac tosses it on the open floor area in the living room. A moment later, a blanket lands on Adam’s head.

Inflation, Adam learns after tossing and turning on the Thermalite thing in the dark for nearly thirty minutes, is in the eye of the beholder, so to speak. “How do they sleep on these things in the woods? It’s bad enough even without having rocks underneath.”

Tommy’s head appears, shadowy and indistinct, over the edge of the sofa. “We can trade,” he offers.

“Nope,” Adam grouses. “If Sophie prances in here in the morning and sees that, do you know how far up my ass her foot would go?”

“You bet it would!” Sophie hollers from the open bedroom door.

“Oh fuck, everyone’s still awake,” Adam moans. 

“You woke us up, bitch,” Isaac calls good-naturedly. 

Adam groans and rolls over and yanks at the thin blanket. “For fuck’s sake, I hope they don’t start having sex or something.”

“Just for that, we’re gonna,” Isaac says. “Ooooh, baby, do that again!” Sounds of evil cackling waft from the bedroom.

But they don’t, thankfully, and Adam wakes up not all that long after, with the birds and the first rays of sunlight, grumbling as quietly as he can, getting up on all fours to twist and stretch his back. He catches sight of Tommy sleeping on the sofa, the sheets and blanket pulled up to his chin. He looks like a cherub. Adam flops down on his ass and leans against the side of the sofa, one arm propped near to Tommy’s tousled head, and stares.

“What is it about you?” he whispers, mostly to himself.

As much as Adam finds Tommy attractive, beautiful even, he’s more struck by how fragile Tommy seems right now. The bruise is turning yellowish. At least it’s not a black eye. Bruise or not, he’s adorable, snuffling a little in his sleep, scratching his nose. His fingernails bear the remnants of black polish, almost entirely picked and chipped off. His hair looks dry and unwashed, as though he’s been using bleach to get it blond, and maybe Koolaid to turn it pink.

Adam hears rustling, a door closing, a toilet flushing, running water, and then Sophie tiptoes in with a small stack of clothing. “I’m going to get those filthy clothes off him,” she whispers to Adam, “and chuck him in the shower. Can you go out and get breakfast? Isaac won’t wake up for at least an hour.”

She sends Adam off with directions to a great takeout breakfast place. By the time he returns, juggling several bags filled with scrambled eggs and hash browns and bowls of fruit and a carry-tray of coffee cups, Sophie’s got the teapot steaming on the stove, and Tommy’s all freshly damp and tousled, wearing Isaac’s plain white t-shirt and skinny jeans. 

They dig in at the kitchen table, Tommy curling his bare toes against the clean linoleum. 

Isaac pads in, still in sleepwear, scratching at his stubble. “So how’s our new guitarist?” he asks with a gigantic grin, drawing up a chair and reaching for the piles of food.

Tommy looks up, surprised, a forkful of hash browns halfway to his mouth. “Huh?” he says.

“We didn’t have time to tell you last night,” Adam says. “Guess who quit our band?” He looks and feels ridiculously thrilled to be saying it.

“Um…” Tommy mumbles. There’s a ghost of a question mark there, and maybe a touch of hope.

“The guitar player,” Adam announces happily.

“What Adam’s trying to say,” Isaac throws in, “is the job’s yours if you want it.”

Tommy puts the fork down. “I, um, I can’t.”

“Can’t?” Adam doesn’t understand.

“I don’t have a guitar,” Tommy explains. “They kept it.”

Adam’s incensed. _That’s_ what is so wrong – when he got Tommy at the curbside, that was the first time he’d seen Tommy without the guitar. “Let’s go get it,” he says firmly, hauling out his phone and thumbing around to find the number Tommy called from.

“No,” Tommy says quietly.

“Yes,” Adam insists. He holds up the phone. “This is the number, right? Your parents’ number? Wanna bet how long it’s going to take me to figure out the exact address that goes with it?”

“Please don’t.”

Too late, Adam’s on Google and he already found it. “This is it, right?” He shows an actual photo of the house from Trulia. “Your last name is Ratliff?”

Tommy cringes.

“I’m _mad_ , Tommy,” Adam says. “Mad. No, not at you, at them.”

“But I don’t think I can deal with it right now.”

“Why are you defending these people who did _that_ to you?”

“It’s more complicated, I didn’t tell you everything, and right now I can’t deal with it, I just can’t.”

“Don’t roll over like that, you have to stick up for yourself!”

Sophie shoves her chair back and grabs the phone from Adam’s hand, setting it firmly on the kitchen counter. “This is not about you, Adam.”

Adam is ashamed; Sophie is right. Sophie is always right. Adam wonders how Isaac can bear living with someone who’s always right. It would drive him insane.

Isaac doesn’t appear to understand his bad luck. He grins and waves his fork in the air. “My bud Evan has a buttload of decent guitars he doesn’t use all the time. I bet he’ll loan you one for now.” He points the fork at Tommy. “Cool?”

Tommy nods uncertainly. 

“Cool,” Isaac says. “Hey, you’re not wearing my shorts, are you?”

Tommy blushes.

Sophie lays a hand on Isaac’s forearm. “Darling? Remember the Hello Kitty undies that your lovely brother gave you for Christmas? The package you never opened?”

Isaac barks out a laugh. “Excellent. They’re yours now,” he chortles to Tommy.

“Don’t you guys have an audition to go to this afternoon?” Sophie asks slyly.

Adam exchanges looks with Isaac. “Oh shit.”

* * *

Brian isn’t happy to have to make all those calls to cancel the audition but he’s pleased to hear about Tommy. In lieu of the audition, they all decide via furious texting to gather at the practice spot and get down to work teaching Tommy the songs.

First things first, though. Before Sophie runs off to her job (selling clothing in a hipster store), she checks Tommy’s cheek. The bruise is already receding. “This looks just fine,” she says, giving him a quick hug and handing over his cleaned and hung-dry jacket. “Keep an eye on the bruises, Adam. Other than that, he should be good to go.”

The front door closes behind her. Isaac is in the bathroom, singing off-key while brushing his teeth. Adam puts the last teacup in the drain basket, dries off his hands on the kitchen towel, and joins Tommy in the living room area. He decides that clean is a great look on Tommy.

They stand there awkwardly. After all the drama and emotion, the excitement and anger, Adam feels a bit deflated. He got Tommy back, but _now what?_

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” Tommy says, standing stiffly, arms at his sides, hands twitching a little.

“Thanks for calling.”

“Thanks for coming.”

“I’m so happy you’re okay. I was worried.” Adam bites his lip. Tommy doesn’t want to meet his eyes, it seems. “Can I hug you?” Adam asks.

Tommy jerks his head in what seems like a _yes_ direction. But he makes no move. Adam takes a few steps forward and pulls Tommy right into his arms, flush against him, and squeezes hard. Tommy doesn’t engage but he doesn’t resist, either; Adam buries his nose in Tommy’s tousled-damp hair that smells of shampoo. After a few moments, Tommy’s stick arms go around Adam’s waist and he hugs back fiercely. He’s stronger than Adam might have guessed. It takes another few moments, while Adam thinks he might start to have trouble drawing breath, until Tommy relaxes marginally, and then it gets comfortable and comforting. Tommy’s face is pressed to Adam’s chest and his breath is softly moist through Adam’s shirt. Adam thinks maybe Tommy is starved for touch, that he hasn’t had enough of it in his young life. If that’s the case, Adam intends to fill the hunger until Tommy is sated.

With impeccable timing, Isaac bursts into the living room right then, hollering, “Oh my virgin eyes! Stop with the bromance, let’s go score a geeee-tar!”


	3. Chapter 3

Over the next few days, everyone is in a great mood except for Brian, who’s a little worn out from making a lot of phone calls to tell guitarists they’re not wanted at the audition after all. Tommy’s getting used to the ESP Ltd guitar that Isaac’s friend loaned (with instructions to take good care of it on pain of death), and he picks up the songs quickly. They have audio of their practices from Monte’s time in the band, and Tommy proves to be able to replicate riffs very decently after a couple of listens. He takes to the loaner guitar like he was born playing it.

Apparently the issue of Tommy’s injuries is going to die a quiet death. Adam’s not down with that. But he’s opposed by everyone else – who think so long as Tommy is okay, it’s his business and no one else’s – so what choice does Adam have? Tommy heals up just fine and seems no worse for it. Adam consoles himself by taking Tommy shopping on Melrose, letting him think he’s coming along so Adam will have company. 

In his favorite store for locally made jewelry, he and Tommy have fun trying on ring after ring of every kind of skull motif possible. He wants to get a ring for Tommy, but maybe a guitarist doesn’t want to wear something that might interfere with playing. He finds an affordable new ring for himself, an owl that reminds me of his mother’s obsession with owl trinkets from the decade he was born, and he buys that. They try on a few necklaces, too; Tommy seems more interested in those, and wistfully takes off the last one, a short string of black beads.

In a clothing store stocked with expensive stuff in the front area and used stuff in the back area, he sits on a rickety folding chair in a dressing stall and watches Adam try on different shirts and jeans. Adam waltzes back and forth from the show floor to the dressing room, each time finding Tommy in the same spot, waiting patiently.

He holds up the jeans. “Yeah?” he asks with a smile.

Tommy nods. “That’s chill.”

Adam shimmies out of his pants. “I know, red underwear, cliché, right?” He waggles his eyebrows, almost getting a smile out of Tommy. Not that he’s seen Tommy smile yet. Not once. 

The jeans go on like body paint. The zipper barely closes over his junk. “Ohmigod, I’m in love,” Adam says. “Wait a minute.”

He wants one more thing from the floor, something that caught his eye. He brings it back and holds it up. It’s a simple black leather jacket in great condition.

“You sure that’s your size?” Tommy says, gnawing on a fingernail that’s almost devoid of polish by now.

“You try it on,” Adam says. It takes some cajoling but eventually Tommy gets into the spirit, standing up and slipping his arms in as Adam holds it out. He settles it on his shoulders and looks at himself in the three-way mirror. 

“That’s totally you,” Adam says. He’s determined to throw away the ugly windbreaker that Tommy still wears.

Tommy lifts one arm and checks the price tag that dangles from the sleeve. “I don’t have that much,” he says, shrugging it off again.

“Nuh-uh,” Adam says, grabbing it from Tommy. “I’m buying it for you.”

Tommy shakes his head. “You don’t have to.”

“I want to.”

“Please don’t.”

“It’s not that much,” Adam insists. “Come on, make me happy, I love doing things for friends.”

Tommy chews on his lip and won’t meet Adam’s eyes. Adam gets that Tommy doesn’t want to be a charity case. That said, fuck it. He likes the jacket on Tommy and clearly it was _made_ for Tommy and Tommy is going to _wear_ that fucking jacket. 

“Are we friends?” Tommy asks. Not what Adam expects to hear.

“No, we’re not. I only take my worst enemies on shopping excursions,” Adam explains.

That ghost of a smile is still hovering at the corners of Tommy’s pretty mouth, and Adam is determined to lure that smile out of hiding. One of these days.

At the register, he jams the windbreaker in the shopping bag before Tommy has a chance to put it back on. Then he makes Tommy put on the leather jacket. It’s obvious Tommy is developing a crush on the thing, regardless of whether he’s embarrassed about getting it as a gift. 

The cute sales clerk smiles. “That’s a great buy,” she says, “and it looks stunning on you.” She looks as though she’d like a smile back from Tommy, and why not, he’s delicious. All she gets is a wry glance.

“He loves it,” Adam assures her. 

She sighs on a smile. “You’re a lucky man.”

Adam grins at her while Tommy shuffles out to the sidewalk fast. Adam catches up. “What? She thinks you’re gorgeous. Which you are. That jacket suits you down to the ground.”

Tommy looks up as they walk, one eye barely visible through the long bangs. “Thanks,” he says quietly.

“You’re welcome,” Adam tells him sincerely. 

Next stop is a burger place on Robertson. Adam is pleased to see that Tommy eats a huge plate of food. He looks undernourished, in Adam’s opinion. No lie, Adam likes them tiny and Tommy is certainly that, but there’s a difference between having small bone structure and not getting enough to eat on a regular basis. Fortunately, Sophie and Isaac are starting to correct that issue.

“Thanks,” Tommy tells him again after Adam pays for the meal.

“You don’t have to thank me. I’m having a great time.” He steers them into a hair salon with a screamingly chartreuse door. 

Tommy looks surprised. “Didn’t Danielle dye your hair the other day?”

“This is for something special,” Adam says, looking around the interior. Several chairs are occupied, and the stylists sport the most outrageous hairdos in the place.

“Adam!” shrieks a woman with spiky violet hair. She races up to Adam and hugs him. “Oh my, who’s this?” she asks once she releases him and gets an eyeful of Tommy.

“Shanna, meet Tommy.”

Shanna grabs Tommy abruptly and hugs him just as hard as she hugged Adam a moment ago. Then she takes a good look at his hair, putting her hands into it without prompting. Tommy flinches.

“It’s okay, honey, just checking the product. It’s a bit dry. We need to deal with these split ends.”

Tommy’s eyes shift to Adam. He looks uncomfortable.

“She owes me,” Adam explains.

“And he never lets me forget. He’s been holding this IOU thing over my head forever.”

“Saving it for something really important,” Adam puts in.

Shanna strokes a hand through Tommy’s bangs one last time and pats his head. “You chose well.”

“Adam,” Tommy whines quietly.

“For me,” Adam urges, leaning down to be at Tommy’s eye level. “Please?”

Adam knows he’s pushing it but he can’t stop himself. It’s so much fun to do things for Tommy, partly because Tommy is so humble he doesn’t expect anything, and partly because Tommy is starting to look incredible. He was amazingly cute before, even under the grime and cheap clothing and Maybelline eye products. Now? He’s becoming a real head-turner.

Adam flips through the pages of a hairstyle magazine while Tommy’s in the hair-washing area. When Shanna sits Tommy in a chair in front of the wall of mirrors, Adam joins them and gets comfortable in a nearby styling chair. He watches happily while Shanna combs and clips a glowering Tommy, then foils up the hair and starts painting.

“Is this going to be bad?” Tommy asks quietly.

“Bad? Bad? Who, me? I’m a fucking professional, baby, you are going to come out of this chair looking like a rock star.”

Adam smiles winningly at Tommy. “I trust Shanna one hundred percent. One thousand. Maybe even one million.”

 

* * *

The transformation is well-received by one and all. Ashley wolf-whistles at Tommy when they arrive simultaneously at their next practice. Isaac bitches that Adam never takes _him_ on shopping and beautifying trips. 

Tommy blushes at all the compliments and pretends to fiddle with the tuning pegs on the ESP. Another thing that’s new – the small necklace of black beads that Adam had bought while Tommy wasn’t looking. Adam had shown it to him that night, spinning Tommy around and fastening the necklace on him and shushing the inevitable _thank you_.

Brian has scored a new gig at the Baked Potato in the Valley – late on a Saturday night, no less. They can’t decide on a name so just to be funny they’re calling themselves the Adam Lambert All-Stars. This disgruntles Brian, who thinks it could just as easily be called the Brian London All-Stars.

They gather at Brian’s roomy apartment in Silver Lake for a pre-gig party. The beer in his fridge disappears fast, after which he breaks out the hard liquor. The nights are still warm even though it’s well into October; the smell of night-blooming jasmine drifts in through open windows. Adam is slouched all over half of the big velvet sofa, with Ashley tucked under one arm as she sips on a mojito. Tommy, the jacket having been reverently laid aside on a dining chair earlier, sidles over and sits down by Adam and is immediately pulled against Adam’s chest, and Adam’s heart does a few flip-flops and before steadying. Tommy rests the newly shaved side of his head against Adam’s shoulder. It’s going to be Tommy’s first time playing at a live performance. He’s jittery as hell, so Adam combs his fingers through Tommy’s shorter hair. It feels soft and it smells like heaven. Shanna did an amazing job. It’s all soft blond with darklights.

“Aw, look at the pretty little kitty,” Matt says as he drifts past the sofa. It shows how comfortable Tommy has become with them that he extends an arm in Matt’s direction to flip the bird, without even turning his head. 

Suddenly the lights are switched on. Everyone moans and covers their eyes. Tommy presses his face against Adam’s shoulder. “Don’t mess up your eye makeup,” Adam murmurs, shaking him lightly. “It’s gig-time.”

“Who’s driving?” Brian bellows.

“Who’s not drunk?” Matt asks.

“I hope you,” Brian says, “since you’re bringing the gear.”

They pile in Matt’s van and a few cars and make it there pretty quickly.

Once at the venue, it takes nearly twenty minutes to get everything ready. Tommy helps to schlep gear and hook up cables, bringing stuff on the stage even as the earlier band is taking their equipment off. Tommy’s borrowed guitar amp, an old Marshall stack, won’t light up, though. Brian is about to have a cow because, as he whispers harshly, he hates borrowing from a venue. Unprofessional.

“What about that Super Champ combo?” asks Tommy. “If it’s in the van we can mic it into the PA.”

Brian frowns, thinks, and nods. “Smart. I think we got everything we need for that in the van.” He sends Matt back to the alley parking lot.

Meanwhile, however, the place has become encouragingly full. Adam notices that there are plenty of new faces in the audience; it’s not just friends of the band. Everything’s ready to rock and they’re on the stage, which is pretty roomy compared to what they’re used to, everything’s hooked up, and Brian is making one last adjustment at the sound board in the back. 

Adam leans over and whispers in Tommy’s ear, “All you have to do is stay behind me. Don’t think about the people out there.”

Tommy purses his lips, earnestly grateful.

Brian trots up and hands the wireless microphone to Adam. “Here’s your dick substitute,” he says. The mic picks it up and the crowd laughs.

Adam yells into the mic, “And that’s the git who plays keys for the Adam Lambert All-Stars.” 

They launch into their best song, _Shady_ , a new one he wrote with a friend in a different band. They had agreed that whoever turned it into a hit first had dibs on it.

They play for an hour and a half because they are on fire. The audience doesn’t want them to stop. The next band is waiting with ill grace for its turn.

Tommy stays in the back, behind Adam, but he nails every song. Brian throws him a lot of encouraging looks as he guides the musicians through their paces. For their Kravitz cover, _Are You Gonna Go My Way_ , Adam gives Tommy enough room to step out now and then, but mostly he’s content to remain in back with Ashley. Sometimes Adam can feel him back there, leaning against his back. It feels warm and sticky and really, really good.

During their set, Adam notices that a whole lot of people, girls and boys alike, are trying to see around him, captivated by the skinny guitarist who is trying to hide and be inconspicuous. _Good luck with that, Tommy_ , thinks Adam. And _Stop looking at him, you fuckers, you can’t have him. I found him, he’s mine._

Afterwards no one wants to go home. They’re high with the exhilaration of an amazing gig. This calls for the all-hours Coral Cafe. 

“Tommy was incredible,” Ashley says over hash browns and bacon. Adam doesn’t know where she stows it on her tiny frame. “He belongs with us.” She leans over to kiss Tommy’s cheek quickly.

“Best decision we’ve made in awhile,” Brian agrees. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna kiss you, bro.”

Tommy blushes and stares at his scrambled eggs.

They made actual money at the gig, nearly eight hundred dollars that they split evenly among the band and the crew. Adam notices that Tommy seems proud to be able to put in money to pay for the restaurant tab. But then, he notices everything about Tommy. Everything: from his crooked nose to his slender fingers to the way he bites his lip and turns his head aside when he’s feeling extra shy.

Late as it is, they can’t leave the gear in the cars parked outside overnight, so four of the guys decide to take it to the studio to lock it up properly. After arranging a complex way to exchange and retrieve cars the next day, Sophie takes Adam and Tommy and Tommy’s loaner guitar to Adam’s place close by, and then Ashley will stay overnight at the Carpenters’ place. Just for one night, which is why Tommy needs to bunk with Adam.

Adam figures he’ll let Tommy have the bed and he’ll sleep on the floor on the sofa cushions. He turns on the light over the stove, and one small light in the bathroom. While Tommy’s brushing his teeth with a brand-new toothbrush from Adam’s supply that he keeps for when he gets lucky, he pulls the sheets from the bed and throws them on the sofa, then gets his second set of sheets from the closet and makes up the bed. 

It looks pretty good, even to Adam. Cozy, clean, comfortable.

Before Adam can register it, Tommy sidles up to him, snugging himself under Adam’s arm. That arm has a mind of its own, immediately drawing Tommy in closer and against his chest. Tommy’s hair tickles beneath Adam’s chin. Tommy smells like shampoo and sunny days. He’s quiet, like always, but thrumming somehow, as though electricity is running through him.

“Tommy?” Adam asks, confused. A little snuggling is one thing but this feels new and dangerous.

“You take care of me,” Tommy says, rubbing his cheek against Adam’s shirt.

“I like taking care of you.”

“No one ever did that before. No one cared about me. Not really. Not for just being me.”

 _Oh Tommy._ Adam squeezes Tommy tightly. “I’m always going to take care of you. You deserve everything good.”

Tommy’s skinny arms sneak beneath Adam’s shirt and around his waist – bare skin – which practically makes Adam come on the spot, no lie. Tommy’s head tilts up until Adam can feel moist breath on his neck. It’s ticklish and enticing.

“I know you want me,” Tommy says quietly, making Adam’s heart thud suddenly against his ribcage. He feels out of breath. 

“You can have me,” Tommy adds. 

Adam feels where Tommy’s mouth moves against his collarbone, even through the tee-shirt. He can’t find the breath to speak. His world flipped upside-down two seconds back and he can’t seem to right himself. One of Tommy’s small, strong hands wends its way to the back of Adam’s head and tugs downward gently.

Their lips meet on the breath Adam finally draws, Tommy’s lips parted slightly, his long eyelashes brushing Adam’s cheek like an electric current.

It’s everything Adam wants and nothing he can deal with. He pulls back, tucks Tommy’s head under his chin and caresses his hair to soothe any thought of rejection. “You don’t owe me anything, baby.”

“I want to,” Tommy whispers.

“Are you even gay?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, it matters. Of course it matters.”

“Not to me it doesn’t.”

“Tommy,” Adam says, fondly exasperated. “You don’t owe this to me.”

“I thought you wanted me.”

Adam sighs. “Baby, how could I take advantage? I’m not like that.”

“Know that. Why I said it, so you’d know. That it’s okay.”

It isn’t every day Adam is handed his fondest wish on a platter. The temptation is incredibly powerful. He half-thinks Tommy is gay anyway, and he knows he would be good to Tommy and good for him. But those aren’t reasons for having a sexual or romantic relationship. If it went wrong, it would break his heart, and he doesn’t want to think what it would do to Tommy, who seems both tough and frail, who doesn’t break because he bends. Adam doesn’t want to ever learn how much bending Tommy can do before he breaks. Adam’s not going to be that guy, not ever.

“Are you mad at me?” Tommy asks, his face still buried against Adam’s chest.

“No, of course not, there’s nothing to be mad about. It’s just, I can’t do that. You’re too important.”

“But I love you?”

Adam’s heart lurches again. Before this is over, he’s going to need blood-pressure meds. “You aren’t _in_ love with me.”

“But I love you,” Tommy repeats more firmly.

“I love you, too,” Adam says, kissing the top of Tommy’s hair. “But I can’t do that. I just can’t. Please don’t ask me.”

Sleeping is awkward. In fact Adam cannot fall asleep at all. When he thinks Tommy’s breathing has settled, he sneaks out of the apartment. He walks around long blocks for over an hour. When he returns, Tommy is in the same position in the bed, his soft breathing no different than before. 

Over the next few days, the scene replays in Adam’s mind countless times. He has trouble falling asleep because his mind won’t stop spinning on what-ifs. What if he had said yes? Why would that be bad? What if he turned down the love of his life? What if Tommy takes it badly and runs?

They’re careful around each other for three days, and then Tommy crawls into Adam’s lap one evening and falls asleep like a cat. It’s like nothing ever changed. Adam is grateful that things are okay.

He’s also grateful that Tommy is back in the Carpenters’ apartment. He can’t take much more of Tommy in his own space right now. And anyway, it’s time to find something more permanent for Tommy, because that apartment is small for three people. Adam’s is even smaller for two, and then he remembers he’s driving to San Francisco to spend Thanksgiving with his mother. Tommy can have his apartment for the long weekend.

He talks Tommy into it. “It’s like you’ll have your own place for five days.” He hands the spare keys to Tommy. “The neighborhood’s safe for walking. I’m sure Sophie or Isaac would be happy to take you grocery shopping. Or to a movie.”

First he has another gift for Tommy – a basic flip phone. Tommy tries to refuse. “I added you to my plan, Tommy, it costs a whopping ten bucks a month. You have to do it – for me. Otherwise I’m going to worry about you all the time. Please?”

Tommy solemnly gets a ten-dollar bill from his small stash of money. Adam decides to take the money rather than argue. He already showed Tommy the emergency cash hidden under the spare rolls of toilet paper in the closet in case Tommy needs it.

Tommy hugs him goodbye. He looks stunned at the thought of a place to himself. Or maybe a tiny bit bereft because Adam will be gone? Secretly, Adam hopes so. 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Adam calls Tommy every four hours from his mom’s condo. He’s in love so he can’t help himself. Disguising it as _making sure the apartment is okay_ doesn’t work. Even his mother isn’t fooled.

“You said that Tommy can play the guitar?”

Adam plays snippets from the practices on his iPhone for her.

“Is he nice?”

Adam shows her a buttload of photos on said iPhone.

“Oh, he’s cute!” She’s stirring cookie batter. For Adam. He loves visiting his mom; it’s like he doesn’t have to act grownup or anything when it’s just the two of them. “So tell me, dear, is this the one you’ve been mooning over?”

Adam sits up straighter on the counter stool. “Who said I’m mooning? I don’t moon.”

Leila smiles beatifically. “You think your mother doesn’t know?”

“Oh, Mom.” Adam lays his head on the counter and sighs melodramatically.

“You don’t call this mooning?” she asks, getting out cookies sheets and cooling racks.

Adam puts a bigger effort into moaning.

“If you start singing _Tit Willow_ I’m going to whack you upside the head with this spatula.”

Adam snorts. 

“Here, you spoon out the dough.” She hands him a spoon and turns on the oven, then pulls up a stool and sits next to him. “Tell me everything.”

So Adam spills out the story while he spoons out the dough. He does tell everything except Tommy’s offer, because he’s afraid she will think Tommy is a prostitute or something. Instead he tells her that Tommy isn’t in love with him.

“How can you be sure?”

“He as much as told me.”

“Because you told him that you are in love with him?”

“Kind of.” 

“He doesn’t seem like he’d say something hurtful.”

“It wasn’t hurtful. Not on purpose. It was truthful. I’m not sure he’s gay.”

Leila nods. “Aha. Has he ever talked about a boyfriend or a girlfriend?”

“Nope.”

“But then he’s been living on the streets.”

“Yeah.”

Leila puts her hand over Adam’s where it lies on the counter. “Adam, don’t take this the wrong way, but what if Tommy has, you know…”

“V.D.?” Adam snorts again. “I’m not sure he’s even had sex. He’s a total loner. He has one friend, a guy named Oracio who gives him work now and then. Far as I can tell, that’s it.”

“Maybe Oracio is his boyfriend?”

“Nope. I think if he could, they’d share an apartment as roommates, but Oracio still lives with his parents right down the street from Tommy’s parents.”

“Who sound like they’re running a strange and disturbing cult out of their house.”

“Yep.”

The oven dings to indicate that it’s heated up. Adam slides off his stool and puts a cookie sheet in the oven and sets the timer. He leans back against the counter and folds his arms. “How come I can’t find anyone, Mom?” he asks plaintively.

“Oh, honey.” Leila goes to him and gives him a big hug. Adam hugs her back. 

“Am I not nice enough?”

“You are the nicest boy the world has ever known,” Leila insists. “You’ve had boyfriends.”

“But it never works out.”

“You’re not that old yet, Adam. Cut yourself some slack.” She pulls back and grips his forearms and looks him straight in the eye. “Are you sure you’re getting interested in the right men?”

Adam raises an eyebrow. “Is this your way of telling me to stop chasing straight guys?”

“Got it in one,” she says, patting his arms and returning to the counter and setting out a fresh cookie sheet. “Come on, handsome, this dough isn’t going to spoon itself.”

* * *

The last call of the night he makes while tucked into the guest bed in the condo’s second bedroom. The lights are out and he dials from deep under the covers. San Francisco is a lot colder than Los Angeles.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“Yes,” comes the soft voice.

“Are you having fun with your phone? Did you put in everybody’s phone number?”

“I did. Isaac showed me how.”

“Good for Isaac. What did you do today, baby?” It feels so intimate talking quietly in the dark like this. He wants to ask Tommy if he’s in bed, too – _his_ bed – but he can’t do that. He’s the one who told Tommy there’d be no sex, so he has to watch out and not confuse Tommy.

“Um, me and Ashley went shopping at this place called Thrift Village.”

Adam laughs quietly. He knows the place well. He’s bought plenty of stuff there himself. He prefers the shops on Melrose but he can’t afford that all the time. “Did you find anything super chill?”

“Jeans and two tee-shirts,” Tommy answers.

Of course that’s what Tommy would buy.

There’s a soft tapping on the bedroom door and he hides the phone under the covers. “Come in.”

Leila leaves the door open a bit, the hallway light falling on the bed. She sits next to him and strokes his hair. “It’s wonderful having you here.”

“Yeah, Mom,” Adam says. 

“What’s under there?” she asks, because of course she can see the glow of the phone through the blanket.

He drags it out and holds it up sheepishly. “Say hi to Tommy.”

Leila takes the phone with a fond smile at her son. “Hello, Tommy? This is Leila.”

Adam can hear the tinny little voice respond.

“Um, hi.”

“How are you doing?”

“I’m good.”

“Adam tells me you are an amazing guitarist.”

“Um. Thank you.”

“One of these days I’m going to come down to Los Angeles when a concert is scheduled so I can hear this wonderful band in person.”

“Sure.”

Leila smiles. Adam can tell that she likes Tommy, even though he’s so hesitant. “I’m going to give you back to Adam, but I do think it’s time for sleeping now,” she says. “Good night, Tommy.”

“Good night,” Adam hears, and then the phone is back is his hand. “Is everything locked up tight?” he says into the phone.

“Mm-hmm,” Tommy answers. “I should hang up, right?”

“Till tomorrow. Good night. Sleep tight.”

He hears a final _g’night_ and thumbs off the phone. When he looks up at his mother, she’s still smiling that sweet maternal smile. He feels tears pricking his eyes.

“Oh my beautiful baby boy,” Leila says. “You’re going to have a nice boy for yourself one of these days. You will.” She leans over to kiss his forehead. “I love you, Adam.”

“Love you, Mom,” Adam says.

The days go by and they don’t get easier. Tommy reports that he and the band are practicing like crazy and that Brian wants to record a new demo as soon as Adam is back. Something about submitting it to the gigantic festival in Texas, South by Southwest. He made some money, too: Oracio took him on another job, helping some people to move to a new house. It was a nice house, not too big but not that small, either. Adam can tell that Tommy was thinking about his own family house growing up, but whether that is good or bad, Adam can’t tell.

In spite of his anxiousness to get back to Los Angeles, Adam is happy for the time with Leila. On the morning he leaves, she holds onto him a long while on the sidewalk outside the condo building. 

“Come visit soon,” Adam tells her. 

He drives a lot faster than he should. He gets lucky – no accidents, no tickets. When he skids into his parking space at the apartment building, he leaves his overnight bag behind and clatters up the stairs and lets himself in. He’d forewarned Tommy by calling an hour in advance, and the apartment smells like pancakes and coffee. That’s kind of upside-down since it’s midafternoon, but who cares?

Not Adam, given that Tommy is standing there barefoot with a spatula in one hand and his new phone in the other, wearing a dark blue hoodie, a striped tee-shirt, and comfortably worn jeans. Adam slams the door behind him and crosses the room in three strides and envelopes Tommy in a bear hug.

“Did you have fun?” he asks. “In your own place?”

“Yes, Adam,” Tommy says, muffled against his chest. “I can’t breathe.” 

Reluctantly Adam releases him. “You made pancakes for me?”

Tommy shrugs one shoulder. “I don’t know how to make anything else.”

“I love pancakes! You and my mom are conspiring to fatten me up.”

Tommy moves into the kitchen to flip the pancakes. The coffee pot is brimful and a jar of real maple syrup is sitting on the counter. He pours himself a cup of coffee.

“Look what I got for two dollars,” Tommy says, pulling at his Frankenstein tee-shirt.

“You’re so stylin’,” Adam chortles, sipping the hot coffee.

And then he hears it. A scratching sound? Tommy looks worried.

“What’s that?” asks Adam. He follows the sound to the hall closet. Something is definitely in there, making scratching sounds. “Tommy! Is Rosemary’s baby in our apartment?”

Tommy stands in the hall, shifting from one foot to the other.

Carefully, Adam turns the doorknob.

“Um, Adam,” Tommy begins. Adam looks back at him. He doesn’t say anything else, though.

Adam opens the door and a tiny kitten scrambles out, skidding on the wood floor. Adam looks at Tommy again. “Tommy?” he asks, with a bit of displeasure this time. He dislikes cats. Dogs are okay. Cats aren’t.

“She was alone,” Tommy says.

“She can’t stay here!” Adam says. “I’m not a cat person.”

“Are you allergic to them?” Tommy asks. “You’re not, are you?”

“No, not allergic, I just don’t need a cat is all.” Adam stomps off to the living room, trying to see where the kitten got itself to. He finds the creature and picks it up. “Ouch,” he yelps when it digs sharp tiny claws into his hand. He goes to the front door and opens it.

“No!” 

Adam turns back, surprised.

“You can’t put her back out there, she’ll die.”

“Okay, I won’t, but she has to go to the shelter.” Adam closes the door again. 

Tommy takes the kitten from him and cuddles the tiny creature to his chest. 

Adam exhales. “Come on, Tommy, you knew I wouldn’t be happy about this or you wouldn’t have tried to hide it in the closet.”

Tommy won’t look up at him. “No one wanted her,” he says softly, stroking the kitten’s dark fur. “She was by that stucco apartment building two blocks away, and this creep kicked her off the balcony.”

“Oh, Tommy.” Adam pushes Tommy’s bangs out of his eyes and lifts his chin. “But I can’t keep her. And Sophie’s allergic to cats.”

“Nobody wanted her,” Tommy repeats.

“Maybe she belongs to someone who’s looking for her right now.”

“There was a lady at the building who said she’s a stray and she just showed up a few days ago and no one came looking for her and no one put up any signs for her.”

“The shelter will find someone to adopt her,” Adam says, feeling guilty for his earlier outburst. Tommy was just trying to do something nice, which is one of the things that makes Adam love him even more.

“Nobody _wanted_ her,” Tommy insists, staring at Adam.

Suddenly Adam gets it. He could smack himself upside the head. 

Nobody wanted Tommy.

Then and there, Adam decides he’s going to become a cat person if it kills him.

Adam doesn’t do things by half measures, either. He’s all in. They get the litter box and food and water dishes out of the closet.

“What’s this shit?” Adam asks, hefting an open box of cat food. “Alley Cat? Who feeds their cat something called that?”

“It was the cheapest one,” Tommy says.

Adam’s in for a lot of virtual head-smacking in the future. He gets it. Tommy bought these things for the kitten from his own cash reserves. “You did great, Tommy. From now on, let’s get the highest quality food for her. She’s scrawny and she needs healthy shit.” He remembers the family dog from growing up and how his parents got the most nutritious brands. Hell, they fed the family dog better quality food than their own sons.

There’s no way the kitten is going to the Carpenters, given Sophie’s allergies, and Adam is afraid to be left alone with the creature, so Tommy stays over again, curled up on Adam’s big bed with the tiny kitten snuggled in his arms.

Adam wakes up hours later, on his makeshift bed of sofa cushions on the floor, with a purring weight on his own stomach. It’s worth it, though, because through the purring he can hear Tommy’s quiet, even breathing.

* * *

Isaac has a lead on two friends who need a third person to share their apartment in Panorama City. They’re musicians, too, so they will understand Tommy. Even though Tommy doesn’t make nearly enough money to truly share rent, they’re happy to have someone in the extra bedroom, even if he only splits in on utilities.

Ronette the tortoiseshell kitten moves there, too. Adam misses Tommy but breathes a sigh of relief, because he can moon pathetically around his apartment and whack off to thoughts of Tommy with no witnesses.

The band practices, creates a demo of three songs, renames itself five times, and gets a CD off to SXSW. They land three more local gigs. Adam scores the Pirate King role in a three-week run of _Pirates of Penzance_ in a mid-sized Woodland Hills theater. He convinces them to hire Tommy as an apprentice stagehand. The pay is shit but they get to spend more time together. They even carpool; Adam picks him up and they go together.

“Tommy’s coming out of his shell,” Ashley remarks one day at the studio while she and Brian and Adam wait for Isaac and Tommy to stop messing with their guitars and amps and cables and drum stands and things.

Adam enthusiastically agrees. “Isn’t it amazing to see?”

“Dude can fucking play,” Brian says. “We got lucky.”

“He’ll be loyal, too,” Adam says.

Ashley squints playfully at Adam. “I think he’s loyal to you, Adam.”

“He likes all of us.”

“And we like him.”

“He wants to play music. He’ll be loyal to the band. It’s not just me, for fuck’s sake.”

Ashley just smiles beguilingly. “Uh huh, Adam, whatever you say.” She bumps fists with Brian.

Adam rolls his eyes.

“Can we go have lunch?” Tommy asks later, as Adam drives him home, having won the right by strong-arming Isaac in the parking lot. They take turns giving Tommy rides, especially Isaac and Ashley because they live in the Valley like Tommy does now.

“Of course. Where do you want to go?”

Tommy names a small restaurant. “I’m treating,” he says.

Adam’s about to refuse when he thinks of the look Tommy got when he paid his own way after the Baked Potato gig. “Thanks,” he says instead.

At the restaurant he orders something inexpensive, just a falafel wrap. He declines dessert but Tommy won’t have that, ordering a big slice of chocolate velvet cake to share. 

“I’m fattening you up,” he announces.

Adam takes a bite of the cake and makes a big deal of moaning in ecstasy. “Am I not fat enough already for you?”

“You’re not fat,” says Tommy. “You’re perfect.”

Adam grins. “I’m perfect? I love you, Tommy Joe.”

Tommy ducks his head. That smile is still haunting the corners of his mouth. Adam wishes he knew what it would take to bring it out.

“I want to do something for Christmas,” Tommy says, looking up again, toying with his fork.

“You mean go to church?” Adam is confused.

“No way. I’m an atheist.”

“Oh.” Adam’s never been very religious. He’s more spiritual than anything.

“I can’t believe in that shit about some random God loving people when kids are living on the street and don’t have food or anywhere to sleep. So – there’s this mission on the Strip, they have Christmas dinner for people who don’t have a place to go. I want to help them this year.”

“That’s awesome, baby,” Adam says, feeling suddenly guilty about the chocolate cake.

“They used to feed me sometimes. They didn’t make me go to church or anything. Just a prayer before we ate and I didn’t have to say it, I could just be quiet for a minute.”

Adam grabs Tommy’s hand under the booth table and squeezes. “I’ll go with you and help.” He figures he could stand to learn more about how people less lucky than he is get by.

“I used to help with the dishes afterwards.”

“We can both do that.”

“And put together the trays and napkins and things to get ready before it starts.”

“Anything they need help with, we’ll do it.”

“Okay. Thanks. It’s just, they helped me. Like you help me.”

“Tommy, you don’t have to thank me all the time. I’m doing it out of pure selfishness.”

Tommy looks surprised. “You are?”

“Of course! I got an incredible friend, and the band got a great guitarist.”

“Oh. Okay, that’s good?”

“Very good, silly goose. And hey, why are you making me eat all this cake by myself? Dig in, for the love of all that’s holy.” 

On the way to Panorama City they stop at a Ralph’s to pick up milk and microwaveable tacos and cat food. Adam grabs a bag of Science Diet for kittens. 

“My treat,” he says firmly.

Tommy wants to get a new toy for Ronette. They have fun looking at the selection. Finally Tommy chooses a feathery thing on a sort of fishing pole. Adam grabs it.

“Let her Uncle Adam buy her a Hanukkah present.”

This means that Adam has to go inside the apartment to see the kitten. It’s a weekday afternoon and the apartment is all theirs, so the three of them play together on the floor, Adam and Tommy on hands and knees pretending to be cats. Ronette hisses a little at first. The feather toy changes her mind completely and she proves to have more stamina than either of them. When they’re finally tuckered out, Tommy curls up in a bar of sunlight that falls across the threadbare carpeting, the kitten nestled in the crook of his arm, and closes his eyes. 

Adam leans back against the sofa, cataloguing everything about Tommy, and remembers the first time he saw him – skinny, ill-nourished, with circles under his eyes, not especially clean, wearing worn-out clothing. Now he’s wearing the jacket Adam gave him, he looks well-fed and healthy, his hair is shiny and clean, his skin smooth and flawless. _I helped make that happen,_ Adam thinks happily. Even though Tommy’s becoming more confident, more open, he’s still a quiet person who enjoys time by himself. Now it’s his choice, though. So long as he loves spending time with Adam, which he clearly does, all is well in Adam’s world.

It occurs to him that Tommy feels similarly about Ronette, maybe. That he made a difference in the kitten’s life, that he loves to care for her. A wave of fondness washes over Adam. He crawls over to Tommy and wraps himself around the slight body so that they’re a little huddle of three. Even with eyes closed, Tommy’s not asleep, because that smile is hovering again. Adam presses his forehead against Tommy’s. The kitten objects to the movement and squeaks, stretches out a tiny arm and flexes her claws against Adam’s wrist, then settles back.

Adam drifts off in the bright afternoon languor.

He wakes suddenly. The bar of sunlight has moved. He’s still curled up with Tommy, but the kitten has disappeared. He hears her lapping water in the kitchen.

Tommy’s eyes are open; he’s watching Adam. Something amazing happens.

Tommy smiles.

It’s a tentative, scared thing, a bare lifting of the corners of his mouth. But there it is and it’s gorgeous.

“Hey,” Adam says quietly.

“Hey.”

He reaches out and pushes Tommy’s bangs off his forehead. It’s so amazing, the way Tommy has changed in a few months, as though he was sleepwalking through life until now. As though he was waiting all his life to become what he is now. Adam feels tears in the back of his eyes; he’s probably going to cry like a big baby. He’s always been ridiculously emotional at embarrassing moments. Early on, he learned to go with it. Leila always gave him permission; now he gives himself permission.

“You’re waking up,” he tells Tommy. “And the world is beautiful.”

“It is,” Tommy says solemnly.

Uh oh. “Are you going to thank me again?”

“Was. Won’t.”

“Good.” 

“You did it for me, though. You woke me up.”

Adam grabs Tommy and squeezes hard. “No, you did it yourself. You came to the audition.”

“Can’t breathe,” mumbles Tommy.

Adam lets up and Tommy rolls away and rises to hands and knees. He looks at Adam another moment and, abruptly, leans down to plant a soft kiss on Adam’s cheek. Then he jumps up and darts off to the kitchen.

Adam sits up, cross-legged, dabs roughly at his eyes, and runs his hands through his hair. The place on his cheek is burning. He’s horribly jealous of the random roommates who share this apartment with Tommy. They get to see him sleepy-warm, just out of bed, or sitting around watching whatever straight guys watch on TV. Almost certainly, they don’t have the slightest appreciation of being favored with such a wonderful gift. He should have been brave and let Tommy stay in his apartment forever, litter box and all. It’s madness, he knows. But he wants it so badly.

He can’t have it, though, so he gets up and follows Tommy to the kitchen and hugs him gently from behind. When Tommy’s hands grip his briefly, he knows this will have to be enough.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Adam comes up with the perfect early Christmas gift for Tommy. Not that either of them celebrates Christmas, but it can be a secular holiday, after all. To be funny, he calls it a Winter Solstice gift.

Basically, it’s a day of running from one amusement park to another in the greater Los Angeles-Orange County area. To make it feasible, it has to be on a weekday so they won’t get stuck in traffic and the parks won’t be packed to the gills, the lines for rides long enough to induce a coma-like state. Adam selects ten days before Christmas, and Tommy stays over Wednesday night in Adam’s apartment so they can get up at the buttcrack of dawn. He brings Ronette to the apartment so they can sleep in Adam’s bed together. Because they can do that now: they’re friends, they can share a large bed without it becoming a thing. It’s torture of the most exquisite kind for Adam. He wouldn’t trade it for anything.

At 7:20 a.m. they leave Ronette behind with a full dish of water, plenty of food, clean litter, and two of her favorite toys – although of course Tommy is her truly favorite toy.

They arrive at Universal Studios at 8:00 a.m. Having to get up so fucking early is almost worth it based on the close-in parking space alone. 

Tommy doesn’t want to go on anything that goes too fast or too high in the air but he doesn’t mind a good scare, so Adam guides them to the House of Horror and Jurassic Park. Tommy gravely informs him that his parents’ church doesn’t believe in dinosaurs and certainly not that they existed millions of years ago, given how they think the Earth is about 6,000 years old. Good thing Tommy learned about evolution before he was yanked out of public school. 

On the way to Disneyland, which is being left for the evening for the decorative lights at night, they stop by Knott’s Berry Farm because it’s the cheesiest thing Adam can think of. They go on a whitewater ride first, and then Adam takes them to the saloon show. He’s seen the small tattoo of John Wayne on Tommy’s right arm. Tommy has only a few, just on his arms – Dracula and Mike Myers and something from a Depeche Mode cover.

He figured right on the entertainment. Tommy loves the saloon and also the Wagon Camp.

Disneyland is the main attraction. It’s delightfully not crowded. There are enough people to give the place a veneer of festiveness, but lines are only ten minutes long at the most. They head straight to the Haunted Mansion. Tommy’s never been here before, either. “My parents told me Disneyland was evil,” he says to Adam as they walk into the elevator. Thunder rolls, lightning cracks, and the ceiling turns into a tower to disaster. Tommy clutches Adam’s wrist. 

“Scared?” Adam leans to whisper in Tommy’s ear. The other five people in the elevator look like bored teenaged hipsters. They’ve been here before.

“It’s cool,” Tommy says. 

“I knew you’d love it,” Adam crows.

“I’ve never seen so much molded plastic in my life.”

Adam snorts and pretend-punches Tommy’s arm.

“I’m serious,” Tommy insists.

Walking down the corridor, Tommy is fascinated, peering around at everything, not wanting to be rushed. He stops for a moment to stare down the endless hallway, where a lighted candlestick drifts in the air by itself, as though held by a ghostly arm. 

Adam shuffles him into one of the cars and then gets in beside him. He resists the urge to sling an arm around Tommy’s shoulders. He’s kind of sorry that this ride isn’t all that scary.

Tommy doesn’t seem to mind the lack of frightening events. Clearly he’s entranced with the whole thing. “I like scary movies,” he says. “I had to sneak off to them with Oracio. We weren’t supposed to watch movies in our family.”

“When did you get the tats?” Adam asks, gently touching Tommy’s left arm.

“After I left. I want a whole sleeve someday.”

“Me, too. What do you want?”

“Lots of ghost and horror things. Dracula or Nosferatu.”

Adam feels silly for wanting a New Age sleeve comprised of an amalgamation of symbols from the Zodiac, Druid beliefs, and alchemy, but he describes it quietly to Tommy anyway, and Tommy doesn’t even crack a smirk.

Tommy’s tat thoughts are more appropriate here, though, and the ghosts dancing in the ballroom are particularly mesmerizing. Tommy leans closer to Adam, craning his neck even as they are nearly past. Adam gives in to his earlier impulse and puts his arms around Tommy and squeezes gently. 

“You like?” he asks.

Tommy nods. He doesn’t push Adam away, so Adam takes one arm back but leaves the other resting on Tommy’s shoulders. The warmth of the small body is delicious. Tommy fits right under his arm, he can’t help thinking. _Like it was meant to be._

For dinner they eat in the Blue Bayou restaurant – it was always Leila’s favorite place in Disneyland, what with the faux fireflies and everything – and afterwards they go on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, followed by Star Tours and then, at Adam’s insistence that it’s not all that fast – Space Mountain. Tommy comes off the ride a bit wobbly-legged but exhilarated. He actually initiates a hug. He actually _giggles._

What Adam hadn’t expected was that Tommy would want to try out Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, and even stranger, that it immediately becomes his favorite ride. “Mom used to read the book to me,” is his only explanation, as they go through the moist and overheated miasma of Hell. “Wow, this part wasn’t in the book.”

“If this is Hell, I’m not afraid of it anymore,” Adam says with a laugh.

Back in Adam’s apartment, as they share a small cartoon of frozen yogurt while sitting cross-legged on the rug, watching Ronette bat a plastic spoon around, Tommy confides that it’s the best day he’s ever had in his life.

It’s Adam’s turn to glow with happiness. “I love you, Tommy. Love you.”

Tommy drops his head and concentrates on the last dollop of yogurt that’s still in his bowl. He’s smiling, though.

Adam finishes his yogurt with a long lick up the spoon. He hums happily. “I don’t think we should let Ronnie eat this, should we? It has chocolate.” He gets up and takes both bowls to the kitchen, leaving them in the sink till later. He returns and sits down with Tommy again, his back against the sofa.

“Come here,” he says softly. 

Tommy eagerly edges over, plastering himself against Adam, settling in with a pleased sigh.

Adam pulls Tommy tight. _Sleigh Ride_ is playing on the stereo. A cinnamon candle in a tea light holder is making the whole apartment smell delicious. Adam wishes – well, he wishes a lot of things. He wishes this strange little person could have been gay. Not just for doing the horizontal tango, although Adam definitely craves that, but for moments like these. It’s lovely to be friends, but it would be more special, Adam feels certain, if he had a lover to share these moments. Being in love isn’t just about romantic stuff; it’s about the everyday stuff.

It takes a moment to realize that Tommy’s hand has found its way under Adam’s tee-shirt and is warm on the lower part of Adam’s belly. Adam grasps Tommy’s hand with one of his own to pull it back out.

“Didn’t we go over this already, honey?”

Tommy draws his hand away and tucks it under his own thigh. “You said you love me.”

“You’re my friend, of course I love you. As a friend. We’re not going to do this.”

“I thought you wanted me.”

“Tommy, you’re a very sexy little thing. You know that, right? But that’s not a reason and we’re not going to do it, we’re just not. It’s not right.”

“I don’t get it,” Tommy says softly.

Adam hates that he put the sad tone in that voice. He hugs Tommy, tucks the blond head under his chin. “Tommy, you have to tell me something.” Talk about awkward. Adam clears his throat. “Have you ever had sex?”

Tommy grunts _duh._ At least the sad tone seems to have been replaced by an offended one. 

“But not with another boy?”

“There was this girl. Karen.”

“Just one?”

Tommy nods against his side.

“Did you love her?”

“I was lonely. At first. Before I got used to being by myself. I think she was, too. You know, lonely.”

“What happened?”

Tommy shrugs. “She wanted to go to New York and be an artist or something, so she left.”

“Do you miss her?”

Tommy shrugs again. 

“Is she okay?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t have a phone or a computer, either.” Tommy sounds sad again.

“I’m sorry, baby. Sorry you and a lot of kids like you have had a bad time. Bad families, bad whatever.” For the umpteenth time, he thanks the stars for his parents. Even though they got divorced, they raised him and his brother well, and he still sees them when he can and talks almost daily with his mother. He’s pretty sure he would never have lasted as long on the streets as Tommy did. He’s starting to realize that Tommy’s strong and tough, far more so than a cursory glance would suggest. He pets Tommy’s hair and kisses the top of his head, letting his lips linger. “Why are you so amazing, Tommy?” he asks, muffled.

All he gets in response is a soft little _whatever._

* * *

There are back-to-back gigs at small bars in the week before Christmas. The holiday spirit is infectious and they wind up with more stacks of ten-dollar bills to divide. Ashley takes Tommy shopping at Thrift Village again and he returns with a black hoodie, a plain leather belt and a pair of fleece gloves since it’s getting colder. 

On Christmas day, Adam fulfills his promise by going to the mission on the Strip with Tommy and helping out for hours. The volunteers sit down together an hour before the event is open to the public, and they eat exactly what will be served to everyone else. There are people of all ages and types helping out, with a sizable contingent of what Adam thinks of as church ladies. One of them – matronly, on the chubby side with frizzled grey hair, no makeup, and clothes that define frumpy – remembers Tommy and sits with them, not before giving Tommy a huge hug first. She asks him lots of questions about how he’s doing and what he’s up to. Tommy seems very happy to have good things to report, and she smiles at everything he says. It’s obvious the people here are happy to see someone they helped making it on his own.

The church’s cavernous activity room is decorated with cheesy but festive Christmas décor. The P.A. pumps out carols and the Nutcracker Suite. In spite of efforts to make this a cheerful event, Adam can’t help noticing that many of the people who come in for the meal stick to themselves, rarely look up, and eat quickly. But they say “thank you,” however quietly, when Adam puts a large slice of turkey on each plastic plate. Tommy is on the other end of the long serving table, pouring out cups of coffee and juice and nonalcoholic eggnog.

Afterwards, while they’re strapped into aprons, washing pots in a huge metal sink, a white-haired man in a clerical collar comes over. “Thomas, I hear from Margaret that you’re doing great things.”

Tommy ducks his head. “I have friends now,” he offers.

The priest (Adam assumes that’s what he is) lays a hand on Tommy’s shoulder. “That’s wonderful news. We’re still here if you need us, but all of us believe you’re going to do just fine. God bless you, son,” he tells Adam over Tommy’s head.

God had nothing to do with it, Adam thinks, but he nods. The priest is only doing what he knows how to do, and as long as he helped Tommy, he’s a good guy in Adam’s books.

“Don’t be a stranger,” the priest tells Tommy seriously.

Tommy nods. “I won’t.”

* * *

Just after Christmas they hear that SXSW has accepted them. Along with two thousand other indie bands, but still, it’s a chance to get heard.

“Our turn to shine,” Brian announces at practice. “This is all gonna pay off. Didn’t I tell you?”

“You told us,” agrees Isaac.

“And told us,” adds Ashley.

“Don’t everybody thank me at once,” Brian says.

Isaac laughs. “I can’t imagine a scenario where I’d ever thank you at all.”

Brian pulls a sad face.

“Okay, okay, thanks!” Isaac yells. “You’re the best band leader ever, bro.”

“About time you noticed,” Brian grouses good-naturedly.

By now they have two new songs. Somehow, amidst the other awesomeness of Tommy, it turns out that he has a knack for arranging music to suit the lyrics and melodic lines that Adam creates. By February, in time for SXSW, they hope to have at least two more.

They settle on Mandatory Cookie Meeting for a name, after going through various iterations like Rabid Frogs and Trojan Purse and The Obvious and The Thin Mints. “It sucks, but we need something,” Brian argues.

“I like it,” says Ashley, flipping her hair.

* * *

Tommy wants to spend New Year’s Eve with Adam. Maybe Ronette and Tommy can come over to Adam’s apartment and watch old movies and drink hot toddies and tease Ronette with her favorite toys?

“Ohmigod, Tommy, I’m sorry but I agreed to go to a party for New Year’s,” Adam says on the day before.

Tommy looks flummoxed. “You did?”

“It’s just some friends – I can cancel.”

“No, don’t. It’s okay.”

“Tommy, if you’re going to be alone – “

“Don’t worry,” Tommy says, going off to find Isaac and ask for a ride to Panorama City.

It takes a lot of talking on the phone (and Adam is so very glad Tommy has that phone so they can talk) to convince Tommy to come with him to the New Year’s Eve party. One more person won’t kill anything. In fact, Camilla and Leigh had already told him to bring a date. Not that Tommy’s a date, but they’ll love him. Adam doesn’t tell Tommy the date part, but assures him that he will be welcomed with open arms.

New Year’s Eve arrives and even though Adam lives in Hollywood and the party is in West Hollywood, he drives all the way to Panorama City to pick up Tommy, who is wearing a lacey purple shirt that might be see-through in better lighting. Adam does an honest-to-fuck double-take. 

“What is that shirt, Tommy?”

“You don’t like it?”

What’s not to like? “I love it. It’s just so not what I expected you to wear.”

“I can change.” Tommy reaches for the seat belt to undo it.

“No way.” Adam puts an arm across Tommy’s chest. “Don’t go anywhere. You look gorgeous.” He pulls away from the curb. “We’re going to have fun. Don’t look so gloomy.”

Camilla and Leigh fall for Tommy, as Adam knew would happen. The two women are a couple, and lots of their guests are gay men and women. It doesn’t escape Adam’s notice that several of the men in the room are taking an interest in the unexpectedly elfin creature in their midst. 

Adam keeps Tommy close by for a while. He doesn’t want to admit it, but he’s monitoring Tommy’s alcohol intake. He’s learned that Tommy doesn’t hold liquor all that well. Probably something to do with the lack of body mass.

They go out on the balcony and look over the Wilshire corridor. Colorful Christmas lights twinkle everywhere. The balcony itself is festooned. Tommy is adorable in the soft lighting. Adam experiences a moment of intense jealousy of the woman who’s going to snare him in the end and make him happy, happier than he is as Adam’s friend. Adam’s good enough to get beyond that and hope that Tommy finds someone and is happy.

A very large man steps onto the balcony, large as in tall and muscular. Adam recognizes him as one of Leigh’s friends, a guy who spent his college years as a linebacker for the UCLA Bruins. Adam doesn’t have to think twice about why Mr. Tall and Muscular came out on the balcony.

“Nice night, yeah?” the guy says, leaning against the balcony. He’s ridiculously handsome. Adam hates him on principle. “Name’s Rob Sanchez.”

“Adam Lambert,” he says, shaking hands. Adam may hate Rob for being so good-looking and manly, but he can’t deny that Rob seems friendly and chill.

“Leigh said you sing?” Rob asks. His eyes shift to Tommy; obviously that’s why he came out here. “And you play guitar?”

“Yes,” Adam says. “This is Tommy Ratliff. We’re in a band.”

Tommy practically glows at the description.

“Hey, Tommy,” Rob says casually.

“Hey,” Tommy says quietly.

“Have I heard of your band?”

“Not yet,” says Adam. “But you will.”

“Wish I had some artsy talent. I’m just a CPA.” Rob laughs. “The world’s most boring job.”

Adam decides Rob is nice and that he’s being ridiculous about Tommy. Tommy can take care of himself, and furthermore, he doesn’t need babysitting. A certified public accountant is not going to haul Tommy off to a lair and rape him. “Hey, I’m going back for some more of this punch; no, stay here, Tommy, I’ll be back.”

He’s a cad, but he leaves Tommy out there with the guy. He has no intention of returning to the balcony. Tommy is allowed to make friends with people Adam doesn’t know. That’s part of leaving the nest, right? So long as Tommy is safe, all is well. More or less. Later on, Adam’s going to corner Camilla and ask her to point out any available straight women at the party.

Someone’s taken an interest in Adam, too, a slender man with dark hair and a beautiful smile. Nick. Normally Adam would be all over that. Even not in the mood for hooking up, he finds himself having a great time talking with Nick, who works for the city planner’s office. They wind up sharing a sofa, wine glasses in hand, laughing a lot because frankly Nick is riotously witty. 

The truth is, Adam hasn’t had sex with anyone other than himself for months now. He wants someone else’s hands on him. He can’t have the hands he wants, so he figures that it’s time for him to get back to dating. Nick would be a great start. He leans over to whisper something in Nick’s ear – something a bit too risqué for others to overhear – and out of the corner of his eye he sees Tommy coming in from the balcony. Tommy’s eyes go right to Adam, and the look of stunned hurt on Tommy’s little face punches Adam right in the gut.

He’s Tommy’s, and he can’t even deny it. It’s pretty fucked up that he’s in an intimate relationship with a guy he can’t even have sex with. He understands that Tommy is still vulnerable, still needs him, but what’s with the cockblocking? Tommy seems to want everything he’s got to give, and Adam’s not able to do that. When did his life get this complicated?

He forces himself not to run off to Tommy. It’s not healthy any longer. Adam has his own needs. He’s in his twenties and therefore regular sex shouldn’t be off the table. He’s not a monk, for fuck’s sake. He’s not even _Catholic_. Nick is right here, cute and funny and friendly. Adam should be able to consider getting together with Nick. Across the room, Rob is trailing Tommy around, and Camilla joins them, and Tommy’s just fine, Adam tells himself over and over.

Counting down to the New Year gets awkward. Nick is clearly interested in trying out a kiss, but Tommy is still there, across the room, sitting between Camilla and Rob on a sofa, looking at Adam while trying not to. Thrumming with energy that Adam can feel all the way over here. Tommy’s like a puppy waiting for an invitation.

On the television, the party at the Icon Lounge is starting its countdown and Leigh shows up with a freshly poured glass of champagne and calls out, “Ten!”

The room joins her with “Nine!”

Tommy’s obviously (to Adam anyway) unhappy and that makes Adam unhappy. On _five_ Adam can’t bear it any longer; he tilts his chin in invitation and Tommy jumps up and darts over to Adam, tucking into his side away from Nick, who gives Adam a surprised look. When the clock hits one second before midnight, Adam doesn’t even know what he’s going to do, scrunched inelegantly between Nick and Tommy, both of them pretty much up in his business. Nick settles it for him a second later by grabbing his face and kissing him soundly on the lips. It’s nice because it’s been so long, but Adam can practically feel the sullen misery radiating from Tommy. 

Adam smiles at Nick, gives him a quick kiss back, holds up one finger, and turns to Tommy. He whispers against Tommy’s ear, “Last year did you ever imagine you’d be here?” Without waiting for (or to be honest, wanting) an answer, he presses his lips against the short hair on the side of Tommy’s head. The only other thing he can do is to introduce the two to each other.

“You’re the guitarist Adam’s been telling me all about?” Nick asks with a friendly smile.

It’s true; Adam was blabbing on and on about Tommy. He feels stupid, but Nick’s comment makes Tommy less miserable. It doesn’t even take that long before Nick has Tommy deep in conversation about music venues around Los Angeles. Working in the city planner’s office clearly has advantages. Nick knows everything. Nick is a great guy if he can draw even Tommy out and get him going in conversation, no matter how hesitant on Tommy’s part.

* * *

The drive back to Panorama City is awkward, to say the least. After twenty minutes of sullen silence, Adam works up the nerve to ask if Tommy met any nice girls at the party.

“No,” Tommy says shortly.

Oh. Okay. So much for that attempt.

“Are you going out with Nick now?”

Adam is about to tell Tommy that’s not his business when he realizes he just asked Tommy something similar. “He asked me out.”

Tommy says nothing.

In another ten minutes Adam pulls up in front of Tommy’s apartment building. He turns off the engine. “I thought you liked Nick.” 

“He’s nice.”

“So what’s the –“

“You kissed him. You didn’t even know him before tonight.”

“He kissed _me._ ” Adam wanted the kiss – a kiss, any kiss – so he feels like a turd for saying this, but he can’t help reacting poorly. For a moment, unfair as it is, he’s a bit exasperated with Tommy.

Tommy folds his arms over his chest and stares out the front windshield. He’s still in the seat belt and shoulder harness. He looks like a kitten in a snit. “You pushed _me_ away.”

Adam sighs inside. He’s careful to keep it there and not let it out. He suspects it wouldn’t go over well. He turns to face Tommy’s profile. “You don’t owe me anything. We need to be friends so we can work well in the band.”

Tommy huffs out a breath and releases the seatbelt. It retracts and the buckle clatters against the passenger door. “Okay.” He opens the door.

“Tommy –“ Adam reaches over but doesn’t touch. 

“Thanks for the ride,” Tommy says, slipping out and slamming the door closed and trotting up the sidewalk to the apartment courtyard.

Adam wants badly to go after him and make it right. Except he has no idea how to do that. 

He drives home very carefully. He knows that he’s distracted and there’s still some champagne sloshing around in his insides. He doesn’t want to cause an accident.

He sleeps for twelve hours. Wakes up, brushes his teeth, turns on the coffeemaker, and calls his mother. 

He whines. There’s no other word for it. He tells her the full story – how Tommy offered to be Adam’s sex toy – twice. “For a minute, that first time, I thought maybe he actually did that to make money on the streets.”

“Are you sure he didn’t?”

“Now I am. But so what? It doesn’t make a difference to me either way. He can’t be my boyfriend and it’s torture and –“

“Adam, stop right there. Something isn’t adding up. It seems to me, from the events you’ve described, that Tommy is interested in going out with you.”

How can his mother be so ignorant? “Mom, no. Wasn’t I being clear? He feels it’s some kind of obligation, some way of paying me back. He can tell I have the world’s most grotesque crush on him, so he thinks that’s what I want.”

“How do you know that’s what he’s thinking? You don’t.”

“Oh my gawd, Mom, I can’t take advantage of him. I can’t be like his parents. Plus he’s straight. His only experience was with a girl.” Adam flounces to his sofa and falls back on it. The sun is too bright. He wants everything to be dark and depressing just at this moment. To match his mood. 

“You’re being melodramatic,” Leila says. “You may be misreading Tommy.”

“Moooooooom,” Adam whines, dragging out the word.

“Here’s what you need to do. Write a sad poem. Get over it. Move on with life.”

“Why are you so reasonable, Mom?” 

“Because I call ‘em like I see ‘em,” she answers. “By the way, Happy New Year, silly goose.”

 


	6. Chapter 6

Tommy doesn’t snuggle under Adam’s arm any longer. He’s serious at band practice, mostly with Adam. With the others, he’s not all that serious. He lets Ashley hug him and play with his hair. He and Isaac have pretend sword fights using mic stands until they wind up on the floor, wrestling like puppies, giggling like imbeciles.

Brian’s mostly business by now, and he pushes the band to be the same. He pokes and prods at Adam to write some lyrics and tunes. One day Adam comes to practice with a piece of paper, which he sets down in front of Tommy.

“Adam?” Tommy asks quietly.

“I wrote some lyrics. They might go with that thing we were messing with a month ago.” 

Tommy takes the paper and folds it carefully and puts it in his pocket. He comes back to the next practice with the song fully worked out.

“Amazeballs,” says Brian, too flummoxed to be embarrassed about using such a word.

Tommy doesn’t get rides from Adam anymore. Mike has fallen hard for Ashley, so he drives both Tommy and Ashley to and from practice.

Ashley elbows Adam one day and asks, “What’s up with you and Tommy?”

“I told you he’s loyal to the band, not to me.”

Ashley frowns but doesn’t press him any further. She knows something’s weird. They all know. None of them wants to say it, though, and Adam certainly doesn’t want to have a group confab about his nonexistent sex life and infatuation with the homeless waif.

One time, just once, Tommy asks him about Nick. “I told him I can’t right now, it’s complicated,” Adam answers, and Tommy nods and that’s the end of that topic. Adam wonders if Tommy is interested in Ashley. She’s pretty enough to pull any straight guy in a ten-block area.

Musically they’re doing great, at least there’s that. Brian grouses out loud that they should have two new songs by now, not just the one. It’s a very good one, though. Somehow Tommy knew exactly how to pair music with the words Adam wrote. When he sings it, Adam is really feeling that sad poem, wallowing in the backwash of Tommy’s misery. He calls it _Runnin’_ and it feels just like his life now. 

* * *

Everyone but Tommy and Adam goes early to SXSW to indulge in the festival scene and hear bands. Matt goes along as crew and Sophie joins them to fill the role of head cheerleader. Meanwhile, Adam’s finishing a run in the chorus of _Into the Woods_ and needs the money. Tommy is afraid to leave Ronette alone with the incompetent pet-sitters Dave and Mike for longer than a few days at a time, so in spite of the awkwardness, he agrees to travel with Adam. They’re not all that awkward. They’re friends. Adam knows that Tommy still cares for him, and thank the Zodiac for that.

For his birthday, Leila gives Adam a plane ticket to Austin, which he immediately trades in for two dirt-cheap tickets that route through Denver via a no-frills airline. For the whole flight from Burbank to Denver, Tommy stays in his own seat. He’s never been on a plane before. He seems nervous but he makes no move towards Adam, for comfort or protection.

They land in Denver just before a winter storm whites out the Rockies. Adam had hoped they’d get back out of Denver under the radar, but this isn’t his lucky day. As they roll their luggage through the concourses (Tommy’s guitar in a hard case loaned by Isaac’s friend), the Arrival and Departure screens show flight after cancelled flight. The airport is filled with exhausted and stranded passengers. The gig at SXSW isn’t for another thirty hours, so Adam tries to stay calm. A ticket agent reassigns them to a flight leaving later in the day, but she warns that it’s not certain the storm will have passed through by then. It’s skirting the northern end of Denver, according to the radar. Denver could get lucky or get ten inches of snow. Hard to know.

Everywhere they go, all the seats in all the waiting areas are taken. Adam buys food at a kiosk and they sit down on the floor and lean back against a wall while Adam texts back and forth with Brian. Hours pass. Adam’s miserable because he stayed up so late. He’s tired, running on fumes. Tommy pats his thigh and Adam gratefully lies down and pillows his head on Tommy’s leg. It’s the first time he’s really touched Tommy since New Year’s Eve. He’s missed it so much. He doesn’t know how to get back to that easy place where Tommy automatically curls up next to him.

He drifts off and wakes to feel Tommy’s fingers carding through his hair.

He sits up and rubs at his eyes. It’s dark outside now. Huge white snowflakes are dashing and swirling madly against the huge windows. “What time is it? Did I sleep?”

“You snored,” Tommy says.

“Sorry.”

“It was funny. Everyone thought so.”

Adam looks around groggily. Sure enough, two middle-aged women wearing black and yellow are smiling beatifically at him, which provokes a weird and unwelcome feeling in the pit of his stomach. 

He struggles to his feet. “Let’s check in with a gate agent again, see what’s up with our flight.”

The new flight is canceled. For the intrepid few who know enough to ask, Adam being one of those, the frazzled agent offers an overnight stay at a nearby Quality Inn. It’s not the Sheraton but Adam accepts, since their new flight won’t leave until tomorrow morning. And that’s only if the storm subsides. He and Tommy will be in horrible shape to perform if they don’t sleep in real beds.

They trudge through the concourse to Ground Transportation. Tommy’s jeans are hanging off his ass as usual. 

“Pull up your pants, honey,” Adam says. “This is a family airport.”

Tommy gives it a try, which only serves to dislodge his backpack. 

“We’re like the walking wounded,” Adam laughs wearily.

At the sidewalk, snow has piled high and is getting higher. They wait a long while, shivering in their leather jackets and scarves and thin gloves until the Quality Inn shuttle arrives. After a harrowingly bumpy ride down barely plowed streets, they sleepwalk into the hotel and get their free room and find it on the third floor.

Two beds are good. Adam tells Tommy to take the first shower. Tommy doesn’t want to take a shower, he wants to face-plant on the bed. 

“Nuh-uh,” Adam says. “We have to be in top shape in barely twenty-four hours. Think how incredible that hot water will feel, and being all clean.” Adam always needs to wash the travel grime off his body as soon as possible. He doesn’t understand people who don’t. Then again, Tommy didn’t get daily showers when he had no home. 

He unzips Tommy’s jacket and pushes it off his shoulders, and Tommy lets him, limp as a doll.

“Bed,” Tommy moans, trying to get away. 

“Shower,” Adam insists, grabbing the hem of Tommy’s tee-shirt and hauling upwards. Tommy’s arms go up like a little kid before Adam remembers he shouldn’t do things like this. Too late. Tommy’s head pops out of the neck of the tee. His thin torso is pale. The tee-shirt comes all the way off and Tommy grabs it from Adam and covers his chest with it, but Adam can still see his bare little arms, so inviting.

Adam thinks sadly that there will never be a time when he won’t want Tommy. He sees the reflection of that thought in Tommy’s deep brown eyes. Tommy knows. He turns and goes to the bathroom. 

Adam’s pretty sure he hears the lock snicking into place.

He picks the bed near the window for himself, assuming the one nearer the bathroom will be warmer. To mark them, he tosses Tommy’s phone on the chosen bed. He sets their backpacks and the guitar near the door to the hallway and turns down both beds. Two water bottles purchased at the airport go on the bedside table between the beds. He turns off all the lights and leaves the curtain open. The hotel’s exterior lights are reflecting off the swirling snow that keeps falling outside the window, creating a soft brightness in the room. Adam’s the first to admit how beautiful falling snow is. Even the sound of wind whistling around the edges of the hotel is sort of cozy, given that there is central heating on this side of the wall. On the other hand, he’s glad he doesn’t live with snow on a daily basis.

The shower stops. The door unclicks and Tommy emerges into the room wrapped in a fluffy towel and a cloud of steam that follows him. “Your turn,” he tells Adam, rummaging in his backpack for a plain white tee.

Adam leaves the door open. It’s too muggy in there already and he’s not shy if someone needs to use the toilet while he’s showering. He stays until his skin starts to get pruny and the water seems to be cooling. He brushes his teeth, then goes into the room and puts on sweats and socks and a tee. By the light of the falling snow, he sees that Tommy is asleep. There’s a worried little frown line between his eyes. Adam touches the line and rubs very gently till it goes away. He climbs into his own bed, facing the window, watching the snow.

The flushing toilet wakes him later. Adam opens one eye to check the window. It’s still night. The bathroom door opens and Tommy’s feet pad across the carpet to the window. Tommy watches the snow falling, and Adam drifts back into dreamland, where Tommy sneaks into bed with him and spoons against him, warm and snug in the cocoon of sheets and blankets and pillows. It’s just a dream so Adam wraps one arm possessively around Tommy’s midsection. 

The next time he wakes, it’s bright morning and the snow has stopped. There’s a warm depression in the bed right next to him. It wasn’t a dream? He tries hard to think if that was real or not, but his head is full of cobwebs. He groans and stretches, gets up for a morning piss, and then realizes Tommy’s nowhere in the room. He hopes Tommy didn’t go outdoors to make snow angels or something equally foolish. He checks his phone for the time and logs onto the airline site. They have two hours and it sounds like Denver International has things running pretty smoothly. He texts Brian that they might make it.

The lock clicks and the hallway door opens and there’s Tommy with a tray of food balanced precariously on one arm. “They have all this free food downstairs,” he says happily. “I got coffee and bagels and cream cheese and oranges and this weird fruit cup for you.”

“You are my hero, no lie,” Adam says. 

“Where should I put it?” Tommy asks.

Adam can’t think of anything better than breakfast in bed. He’s in his nighttime gear and his feet are bare. “It’s still warm,” he says, jumping into his bed and hauling the blankets over his knees. He makes room for Tommy, who sets the tray on the covers, kicks off his shoes, and gets in next to Adam. They make a nice meal from the continental-breakfast goodies.

“We’re going to make it on time,” Adam says, sipping at the last of his coffee, leaning back against the pillows. Tommy tentatively rests his head on Adam’s shoulder, snuggling in closer when he’s not rebuffed. 

“You still like me, don’t you?” Tommy asks.

“I still love you,” Adam says solemnly. 

Tommy turns his head just enough to kiss Adam’s shoulder.

Adam shakes his head. “Honey, how many times do I have to –“

“You don’t own me, Adam.”

Adam is so startled that he swallows wrong and coughs. “Excuse me?”

“You can’t tell me what to feel.”

“I wasn’t – Did I?”

Tommy nods against his shoulder. “All the time.”

Adam grimaces. “I don’t mean to. I was just taking care of you. Don’t blame me for that. I want to take care of you. Like you take care of Ronnie,” he adds in what he prays is a brilliant afterthought.

“That’s different,” Tommy says. “She’ll never grow up. I already did.”

Fucking cats, Adam thinks. A perfect case of permanently arrested development. Not so with Tommy. Adam can’t make head or tail of what Tommy is trying to tell him. There’s no time for this now. Adam pushes away the breakfast detritus. “We have to catch that shuttle back to the airport. Go brush your teeth and get ready.”

Tommy sits up and rolls his eyes. “Yes, Mom.”

* * *

Austin is warm, like Los Angeles. They’re playing outdoors at night on a makeshift stage in a gigantic parking lot. Brian is happy with it. He estimates three thousand people standing in that parking lot. “Our biggest concert ever! Our only job is to go out there and be amaaaaaaazing!” He knows full well that there are music producers roaming everywhere at the festival. Bound to be some right here tonight.

They start with _Shady_ to get the crowd going, then _Sleepwalker_ , _Trespassing_ , _Pop That Lock_ and _Fever_ , slowing it down again with _Soaked_ because, as Brian insists, showcasing Adam’s incredible voice is a very wise idea. The audience agrees. They’re totally on board by the time the band launches into _Are You Gonna Go My Way_. When it’s time for Tommy’s solo, Adam sneakily shoves him out front and Tommy totally kills it. He’s completely into the groove – they all are, really – and it’s like he’s a different person on stage. Adam approves. He can see that Brian approves from behind his keyboard. 

Adam himself is having a blast. The stage is big enough for some real movement and he has never minded making an ass of himself on a stage if it entertains people. He dances from one end to the other, mugs at the people in the front, and draws shrieks of approval when he turns his back on them and shakes his ass like a diva. The part he likes best is when he sings right to Tommy and they wind up leaning against each other. He likes how much Tommy trusts him not to let him down.

Second-to-last is _Runnin’_ , which Adam sings most of with his arm slung over Tommy’s shoulder. It’s impressive how Tommy can keep playing on target, no matter what Adam does. He’s been watching Adam, too, the whole time. Adam’s caught Tommy smiling at some of his shenanigans.

For Tommy, the band had agreed in advance to do _Enter Sandman_ as their last number. “This is Tommy Joe’s favorite song!” Adam hollers into the mic. “His favorite song!” They launch in, and it appears it’s the audience’s favorite song, too, since they scream along to all the lyrics. The cheering at the end is satisfyingly loud and goes on for what seems like forever. They’d love to do an encore but it’s not permitted because it’s time for the next band to take the stage.

By the time they’ve packed up their gear, Sophie and Matt already scouted the best place in Austin for burgers and beers. They get a circular booth in this crowded, noisy place. The performance high is still strong. They were on fire on that stage and they know it.

Brian arrives last, shoving into the booth, smashing the rest of them together even more tightly. “Nachos! Praise the lord! Who ordered me a margarita? I love you long-time!”

Brian has Big News. He announces they have an offer for a recording contract with Matador Records. 

Ashley shrieks and jumps out of the booth and does a little victory dance. “I can’t help it!” she cries, sitting back down. “I’m excited! How’d it happen? We want the details.”

“This mogul guy took me to a hotel room and made all sorts of promises and offered money. I think we should sign the contract.”

“You make it sound so dirty,” Isaac says. “What if this mogul guy fucks us over?”

Brian laughs and pounds the table, making the flatware rattle. “He’s legit. So’s Matador. We’re talking indie but hey, that’s what we’re about, right?”

“This is so exciting,” Ashley says, giving herself an _I-can’t-believe-it’s-real_ shake.

“What’s the next step?” asks Isaac.

“I emailed the contract to my lawyer aunt,” Brian answers, “and once we have her thoughts we can finalize it with Matador and sign.”

“How many albums?”

“They want two. Then we can re-up, depending on how everyone feels about how the first two went. We have enough original material to record one album already. The guy liked that a lot. Probably why he made the offer.”

“Is there a signing bonus?”

“Oh yeah, baby. Not like winning the Powerball but it’s enough to keep us going for awhile. Plus, depending on how sales go, they’ll support a tour at least partially.”

Sophie squeaks happily and hugs Isaac, then turns to the other side and gives Tommy a squeeze. “You all deserve this,” she says to the whole table. “I’m so proud of all of you.”

“Not just me?” Isaac whines.

Sophie sticks her tongue out at him. “Without them, you’re nothing, sweetheart.”

“You did good, brotha,” Adam tells Brian, reaching to the center of the table with one hand. “All for one and one for all!”

They do the Three Musketeers thing with enthusiasm, following it up with a clinking of beer mugs.

“The new song is perfect. Did you hear Adam? Wow,” said Ashley.

Brian grins. “I was there, damn straight I heard.”

Adam beams. “Ash and Isaac laid down the sickest beats in this whole fucking festival!”

“We’d be nowhere without our keys,” Ashley throws in.

“You know what?” Brian says, leaning forward as though he’s going to divulge a gigantic secret. “Madonna can fucking _keep_ Pittman. We got the better deal by a mile.”

Tommy blushes and hiccups.

“Whoa, baby, that’s enough for you,” Adam says, taking the beer mug from Tommy’s hand.

They fantasize about what they can do with a signing bonus: some touring gear, upgraded amps, a second keyboard, new drumheads, wireless packs for the guitars, a mic stand that won’t collapse if anyone dares to look at it sideways. They’re going somewhere – and they know it.

In the middle of their excitement, Tommy raises his hand, as though he’s in class and asking to be recognized. Everyone turns to him. 

“What does our lead guitarist need in order to become the new Hetfield?” Brian asks indulgently. “The newest bad-ass pedal on the market?”

Tommy shakes his head. “I want my own guitar back,” he says with determination and a heartfelt hiccup.


	7. Chapter 7

The house is in a lower middle-class neighborhood in the flight path of Burbank Airport. The grass is a little brown at this time of year. Even so, it’s tidy. The neighborhood isn’t fancy but it looks quiet and decent. 

Adam leads the way up the walkway to the front door, Tommy just behind, twitchy and nervous. Bringing up the rear is their security detail – Rob Sanchez and Brian’s sister’s boyfriend, aka Curtis, a bruiser at least as big as Rob and much meaner-looking, although Adam’s met him before and he’s secretly a soft-hearted teddy bear.

Adam rings the doorbell. 

The door opens and there’s a medium-sized old guy. Tommy’s dad? 

The old guy squints into the sun. “Yeah?”

“Reverend Ratliff, I presume?” Adam folds his arms over his chest. He’s wearing engineer boots that give some extra height. Maybe the eyeliner is also freaking the reverend out. Adam feels rather powerful. He could kick this weedy dude’s ass from Toluca Lake to Magic Mountain.

“What do you want?”

“You have something that belongs to a friend of mine. I’m here to collect it.”

“Really?” The man laughs. “You must be on a fool’s errand. We don’t take to your kind here. This is a God-fearing establishment.”

Tommy steps out from behind Adam.

The man’s expression tightens. “Thomas?” He turns and signals inside. Someone the size of a refrigerator appears past the reverend’s left shoulder. 

“What’s going on, Uncle Caleb?” the refrigerator asks, glowering at Adam in particular. Adam guesses that this is Tommy’s cousin and furthermore that he might be the one who put the bruises on Tommy several months ago. He looks mean and angry enough. Adam is very glad that Rob and Curtis have their backs.

“Nothing to worry about,” says the old man. “Praise the Lord, Thomas has come home.”

“This isn’t my home,” Tommy says tightly. “I’m here for my guitar.”

“You never _owned_ anything. You ran away with the shirt on your back, boy. That’s all you’re getting for free. We gave that old guitar to Alicia’s boy anyway.”

“I don’t mean the old one,” Tommy says. He sticks close to Adam. It’s clear to Adam that Tommy is avoiding even looking at the cousin.

“No idea what you mean, boy.”

“Yeah, you do. Last time I was here.”

“Last time you were here was the last time you had a chance to be saved.”

For a moment, Adam thinks Tommy might back away and leave. It’s up to Tommy, of course, but if he does that, Adam is going in that fucking house anyway and finding that fucking guitar and bringing it fucking back out. But he waits. This is Tommy’s call. Another moment, and Tommy seems to mentally shake himself and now he’s okay. He’s going through with it.

“My guitar,” he says through clenched teeth. “You think we can’t take it from you?”

The reverend looks miffed, as well as concerned when Rob and Curtis glare balefully at him. He steps back into the house. “Well, come on and show me what you think is yours, then.”

Tommy looks up at Adam, who looks back at the big guys. They nod. 

“Leave the bodyguards where they are.”

Adam exchanges looks with Rob again. 

“We’ll be waiting here for you, Tommy, Adam,” says Rob. “Leave the door open,” he tells Tommy’s cousin.

“Holler if someone needs a beat-down,” Curtis says in a deep, menacing voice.

Adam touches Tommy’s elbow; they file into the house. The living room is well-kept and clean even if the furnishings are badly outdated. The drapes are drawn against the bright outdoor sunshine, leaving the room in dimness. As for artwork, Adam’s never seen so many crucifixes before in one place, not excluding the time when he went to a cathedral with a Catholic friend to experience a mass. Not only that but there are framed portraits of Jesus and what Adam assumes are saints in myriad poses of martyrdom.

A haggard woman in a housedress wearing a crucifix on a necklace rises from a couch. 

“Thomas, you came back, thank God,” she says. “I pray for you every day.” She moves haltingly across the carpet and hugs Tommy. 

He endures it but no more, saying, “Hi, Mom,” without emotion. “Is Linda here?”

“In the back,” says his mother, releasing him and rubbing her palms on her dress.

“Diana!” the reverend says sharply.

“Leave her alone,” Tommy tells him. “And get out of my way.” He leads Adam around his father to the back of the house, skirting past the cousin with a barely suppressed shudder.

“This was my room,” Tommy says, opening a door. It looks like a child’s bedroom with a small bed and a scratched desk, nothing on the walls beyond another crucifix. In the corner is the gig bag that Adam recognizes.

“What’s in this house, you leave here,” says Tommy’s father, who has followed them to the room.

Tommy grabs the bag, unzips it to check that the guitar is fine, and zips it back up. “I bought this with money I earned. You have no right to keep it.”

“You’re making a mistake, Thomas.”

“I have friends now,” Tommy says, not looking at his father, moving past him to get out of the room.

“Friends are of no worth when you haven’t accepted God into your heart.”

“Hey, give it up, would you?” Adam says. “Tommy’s not interested in what you’re selling.”

The reverend glares at Adam as though he’s trying to curse him. He turns malevolent eyes on his son’s back. “We named you well, doubting Thomas.”

Adam’s had about enough of this freakish asshole and this depressing house of horrors. No wonder Tommy was so quiet and afraid at first. Growing up with this? Adam would have run out into the street in front of a car. He gives Tommy props for having survived this hellhole and then for having lived incognito on the streets for so long.

In the hallway, Adam hears the cousin hiss _faggot_ under his breath – whether he is aiming that at Adam or Tommy, Adam can’t tell. He makes sure to keep himself between the cousin and Tommy.

Tommy isn’t quite done with the house. Adam follows him into the kitchen. A young woman sits at the kitchen table, holding a sleepy baby and looking anxious. 

“Tommy? I heard your voice,” she says, standing up, the baby against her shoulder. 

Tommy gives her a one-armed hug. “Hey, Linda. This is my friend Adam. Adam, this is my sister.”

“Tommy, I’m glad you have a friend but you can come home, you know. I did.”

“You had the baby.”

Linda nods. “Don’t you want to come home? And watch your niece grow up?”

Tommy touches the baby’s hand; tiny fingers flex and curl around his smallest finger. The eyes are closed in the scrunched-up face.

“Her name is Bernadette.”

“Hey, Bernadette,” Tommy says very softly. Bernadette snuffles. He turns to Linda. “How are _they_ about this?”

Adam is aware that the reverend is standing in the kitchen doorway, watching and listening.

Linda’s eyes shift to the doorway, then back to Tommy. “Bernadette is a child of the Lord. She’s an innocent.”

“For now,” Tommy says wryly. “I get it. Take care of yourself. If you ever need me, remember this,” and he whispers something in her ear. He turns to Adam with a _Let’s go_ look. They walk back through the house, under the watchful eyes of Jesus and various blood-spattered saints, past the grim father, the lurking cousin, the unhappy mother. 

Tommy never looks back. He’s shaking by the time they get to the car. But he’s got the guitar.

* * *

Adam makes an executive decision that Tommy is not allowed to be alone tonight. They’re in Adam’s apartment, Tommy cross-legged on the floor as usual, re-stringing his Jaguar, and Adam on the sofa, playing with Ronette, who is visiting at Adam’s insistence. He’s starting to like the crazy little critter. 

“What did you tell your sister?” Adam asks.

Tommy holds up his cell phone. “My number.”

“In case she decides to get out?”

Tommy nods. “When you came and got me, I wanted her to come, but she was pregnant and I guess they gave her a guilt trip.”

“So the father…?”

“She’s not telling, far as I know.”

“What if she forgets your number?”

Tommy cuts one string and draws it through the bridge saddle. “I’m done with hiding. She’d be able to find me.”

“Okay.” Adam mulls it over. The story of Tommy’s life is sad and pathetic and mean and unpleasant. He wishes he could forget he ever knew anything about it. But that would mean he’d never know Tommy. Unacceptable. He will deal with the awful thoughts of how Tommy was raised, so long as he can have Tommy now. He feels a deep need to hug someone or something, but Tommy looks very prickly over there with wires poking every which way, so he lifts Ronette from the floor and gives her a little squeeze, to her great indignation.

Tommy looks up and smiles while winding a fresh string around the tuning peg. “She likes you but she doesn’t want you to know.”

* * *

Tommy surprises him one day by saying he got a part-time job at the Guitar Center in Northridge, close enough for taking the bus to and from work. He helps in the back, where the guitar technicians work. He has a natural talent for working with guitars and it doesn’t require talking to the public. The store’s luthier takes a shine to him and makes him an apprentice of sorts.

The recording of Mandatory Cookie Meeting’s first album is going by fits and starts. Partly it’s a matter of using recording studios during off hours to keep expenses low. They have to re-record their previous recordings and come up with new stuff as well. Other than Brian, the whole band needs to get used to how the process works. Moving forward is what matters. As tired as they get at 2:00 a.m., they have a great time and are bonding as a band.

“Good thing we all have different skills,” suggests Isaac.

“Yep,” agrees Brian, “and that Adam’s the only one with a big ego.”

During January, Adam finds himself hunting for apartments on the Internet. He wants something larger than his current place but at a similar rent, so that means the Valley. He loves living in Hollywood. He loves Tommy more. He thinks (stupidly, even to himself it seems that way) that he and Tommy could share an apartment. He’d be able to watch over Tommy better. Sure, Tommy is his own man, has proven he can take care of himself. That doesn’t stop Adam from feeling protective. It’s going to require two bedrooms since they will be just friends. Mostly, though, it’s a fantasy. Adam’s good at fantasizing. He spent all of junior high and high school fantasizing about having a boyfriend.

He takes Tommy on a date, a fantasy date. That means that Tommy doesn’t realize it’s a date, so all is well as far as Adam is concerned. There’s a cute little beachside café in Malibu. The sky is gloomy and the ocean looks grey. Winter rains are expected later in the day. After all the bright sunshine throughout the year, Adam always loves when it rains. He’s rarely seen a real thunderstorm, so he looks forward to it. For now they’re sitting in jackets in the outdoor patio, screened on three sides, with gas heaters going strong.

“Look. It’s raining over the ocean,” he says, as they look over their menus. The ocean is glassy, weirdly beautiful. “Have you heard from Linda?” 

“No.”

“You could call her at the house.”

“They’d have my phone number then.”

Adam figures that’s a reasonable concern. They may know better by now than to go after Tommy, but what’s the point of giving them ammunition? “The baby was so cute,” he says. “I like Linda.”

Tommy looks sad. That wasn’t Adam’s intention – to put a sad look on Tommy’s face. He rushes to fix it.

“What if you could meet Linda at a park with Bernadette? She must take her out in a stroller or something, right?

Tommy chews his lip. “Maybe,” he agrees. He looks over at the ocean. “They didn’t let her outside much after she went and got pregnant.” He pauses. “I thought they were monsters. I guess they’re just sad creeps.”

“I’ll help you get in touch with Linda. They already have my phone number from when I called. We’ll use mine.”

Tommy looks gratefully at Adam. “Thanks.”

“You miss Linda, don’t you?”

“Sometimes we only had each other. We always planned to get out of there but when I finally did, she was scared.”

Adam wonders if being afraid of new things is worse than living in misery. “What scared her?”

“She believes in hellfire.”

Adam reaches over the table and engulfs Tommy’s hand in his. “We’ll help her.”

“I had to pretend I didn’t care about her back then.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dad was so fucking jealous of everyone. I hated talking to him but if I didn’t, um.” He stops abruptly. 

“Go on,” Adam encourages, trying to beam love and acceptance via brain waves.

“If anyone was nicer to someone else there, he hated that. So I learned how to pretend I didn’t care about Linda.”

“But she knew you did.”

“Maybe. I suck at talking, and explaining things.”

“You did an amazing job at the house the other day. Linda knows, believe me.” Adam squeezes Tommy’s hand and lets go. “I’m so sorry they hurt you, baby.”

“They didn’t hurt me, not really. They just made me hate them. The only people who can really hurt you are the ones that love you. They didn’t love me. They don’t love Linda, they just want to make her like them. And her baby.”

“We’re going to help them get out of there. Somehow. Promise.”

Tommy trusts him, and Adam’s fucking serious, so that’s settled. He hopes his mom can help figure out where Linda and the baby could go. He plans that for the main topic next time they talk on the phone.

Throughout the meal, Tommy and Adam discuss the recording sessions, Tommy’s job, and how Adam’s car needs a tune-up. That makes Adam think of teaching Tommy to drive, and getting a license for Tommy. So far it’s lucky no one carded him at a gig – they just let band players in without asking. 

The world is full of possibilities and things for Tommy to learn and do for the first time. It’s bizarre that he grew up in such a huge city and knows so little about some things. Testament to the pathetic monsters in that plain Burbank house. All that said, Tommy is a quick study without losing any of the quiet fey sweetness that he had that first day, months and months ago, at the audition.

After the meal, they wander down to Point Dume. Off in the distance, a few people stroll along the sand, braving the cold breeze that comes off the ocean and the threat of imminent rain.

“Was that a date?” Tommy asks abruptly.

Adam’s heart stops. “No, of course not, I wouldn’t do that to you.” 

Tommy frowns a little, staring at the breakers, wind blowing his bangs across his face. “Okay, sure,” is all he says.

Adam doesn’t know what to make of that. He follows Tommy down to the sand and they walk along it. Tommy stops now and then to pick up a pretty rock or a tiny shell. 

“Rob keeps calling me,” he announces out of nowhere.

“He does?”

“He wants to go out on a date.”

“And you don’t?”

“Not with him. I like him, but not that way.”

“We need to find you a cute girl,” Adam says, dying inside.

“No thanks,” Tommy answers, hard to hear over the waves. 

Without being able to see Tommy’s face, Adam can’t read his expression. “Life’s pretty complicated right now, just the way it is.”

Tommy nods, kicking a small rock with the toe of his shoe.

“Nick used to call,” Adam says with a sigh. “He must have finally given up.”

Tommy mumbles something.

“I’m sorry, couldn’t hear, did you say something?”

“He’s nice. Why don’t you? Go out with him?” Tommy says in a louder voice.

Adam shakes his head. “He’s very nice. If I wanted to be with him, I’d be with him.”

“But you’re here.”

“Exactly. Right where I like being.” Adam smiles brightly, jiggling his hands inside his jacket pockets. 

“Here? It’s cold right here.” Tommy even laughs a little. He’s shivering.

Adam moves between the biting breeze and Tommy, pulls Tommy’s back against his chest and holds him there, facing inland.

“I want to live in a house like that,” Tommy says. He’s looking at a large modern house on a small cliff, overlooking the beach and the ocean.

“If I had enough money, I’d buy it for you.” Adam wonders if Tommy would settle for a two-bedroom apartment in the Valley. “My mom’s coming down here in two weeks.”

“Oh shit.”

“Why oh shit?”

“What if she doesn’t like me?”

“Don’t be insane. She’s going to love you from the moment she sets eyes on you. She already loves you from talking to you on the phone.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh yeah.” 

Tommy twitches. Adam’s come to recognize that it’s his nonverbal way of expressing doubt. He wonders if Tommy has been trying to tell him something in his awkward way. Tommy has admitted that he has trouble expressing affection, at least in words. Yet he offered himself to Adam very early on. And ever since, Adam’s been pushing him away.

 _The only people who can really hurt you are the ones that love you._ There’s that mental head-smacking again. How many people has Tommy ever thought loved him? It’s not easy to convince him that he’s cared for. He’s getting better at it, but he still won’t acknowledge that people like him. 

Except for one person. Adam.

Adam feels the waterworks starting. Damn it. Puts his chin on Tommy’s shoulder and presses his cheek to Tommy’s. “Have I hurt you?”

If Tommy’s surprised to hear that question, he doesn’t show it. “I know you don’t mean to.”

“Never. But still.”

Tommy pulls his hands from his pockets and puts his arms over Adam’s. “I’m bad at saying stuff.”

“No, you’re not,” Adam says automatically. If he has to spend the remainder of his natural life convincing Tommy that he’s smart and confident and valued, then so be it. It will be a good use of his time.

“Am so,” Tommy argues. “Love you. That way.”

That does it. Adam’s going to burst into tears right out here in the middle of stupid Malibu. Fortunately it’s cold and windy, or there would be a lot more witnesses. “Oh, Tommy.”

“Don’t start that again,” Tommy complains. “You never listen to me.”

“I’m listening now.” 

“It’s not like I had a lot of time to experience shit. I had to pretend like I didn’t care about anything. And then after that I was just trying to stay alive. I stayed away from people, mostly.”

Something hits the back of Adam’s neck. He hopes it isn’t a seagull doing its business. Then he sees fat raindrops splatting on the ground. 

“Shit!” he and Tommy exclaim at the same time. 

“Run for the car!” Adam yells, laughing manically. It’s better than crying. He grabs Tommy’s hand and pulls him along. Four blocks is a long way when a squall has just made landfall. They’re soaking wet by the time they get inside, laughing together after the exertion of running so fast.

The rain drums on the roof. It’s hard to see through the water coursing down the windows as though a bucket has been upended over the car.

“Rain is cool,” Tommy says. His hair is plastered to his head. It looks hilarious. So much for the expensive hair product that Shanna gave to Tommy.

“I agree.” Adam looks up at the transparent sunroof. “Wow, it’s really coming down. We need to move before gutters start flooding.” He turns on the engine and hopes the heater doesn’t take long to warm up. He looks over at Tommy. Tommy looks back, one eyebrow up, like a question. “Will you come home with me?” Adam asks. 

Tommy looks shy. His eyes drift away and he bites his bottom lip. Looks back up at Adam and gives a tiny nod. “What about Ronette,” he says softly.

Adam gets out his phone and punches in a text message to Mike - _take care of the cat or you’ll answer to me_ \- shows it to Tommy, who smiles, and hits Send.

He turns the wipers on and pulls away from the curb and heads for the Pacific Coast Highway. He anticipates forty minutes of careful driving in the pouring rain to get to his apartment.

The phone dings. He checks the reply: _she be chillin. watchin football with me. all good_.

Adam goes inland on San Vicente and then shifts up to Sunset; even though it winds a lot, there are fewer traffic lights and it’s a prettier drive. Not that much can be seen in the driving rain. As they pass along the north side of UCLA campus, Tommy blurts out, “I was afraid you didn’t want me anymore.”

Adam looks over. “What? No way.” He takes the next right and pulls onto a wide side street lined with multi-million-dollar homes, braking the car to a stop next to the curb and yanking up the parking brake. Snapping off his seatbelt, he turns to grasp Tommy’s face in his hands and kisses him firmly. 

“I have always, always wanted you, and it never stopped and it’s never going to.” He stares into Tommy’s startled eyes. “Do you have any idea how dear this face is to me? I am in love with you, Tommy Joe, and I’m always going to be.”

The street is empty. No one is watching. The rain makes a soothing sound around them. Tommy’s lips are curved in a shy smile, so Adam leans in again and this time their lips meet somewhere in the middle, Tommy reaching for Adam just as Adam does for Tommy. The clumsy angle and Tommy’s still-engaged seatbelt don’t prevent a nice long kiss. Tommy’s lips are even softer than Adam has been imagining for months now; when those lips tentatively part, Adam kisses him more deeply and thinks his heart might break. He’s that happy.

When he pulls away, Tommy’s eyes are closed, his lashes dark on flushed cheeks. Adam’s never in his whole fucking life seen anything so beautiful. If he doesn’t get control of himself right now, though, they’re going to wind up having sex in his car and getting picked up by cops in a tony Westside neighborhood about ten seconds after the rich people behind the shutters notice that a beat-up sedan is idling next to their carefully tended hydrangeas.

“You know what we need to do now?” Adam whispers.

Tommy’s eyes open. “Go home?”

Home. Adam smiles and plants one final kiss – a promise – on the perfect lips.

 

THE END

 

_But wait… there’s more. Tomorrow there will be an epilogue._

_When I first started writing this whole story, I hadn’t thought the end would be right here. But when I wrote those words above, I realized it’s the perfect ending. Isn’t it? Tommy’s gone from homeless to cherished._

_Yet Tommy and Adam deserve one more scene, and I couldn’t stop myself from writing it because I already miss these two. The epilogue will be posted tomorrow on New Year’s Eve. Thank you for reading, and for those of you who let me know you’ve enjoyed reading it, thank you especially for that. <3_


	8. Epilogue

HOME

Home is a tiny apartment in the Hollywood flats with bad plumbing and peeling paint.

Home is Tommy against the wall next the door because Adam can’t wait another second, holding Tommy’s hands down by his hips, pressing him right fucking into the wall, kissing him like he’ll never get enough of it – because he’s not sure he ever will – and Tommy giving back as good as he’s getting.

Home is the soft look in Tommy’s eyes and the rosy flush on his cheeks. 

When Adam finally draws away and lets Tommy’s hands go, those skinny arms instantly encircle his back, clutching fiercely. Adam wraps his arms around Tommy’s shoulders. 

“Tommy honey, last chance to say no.”

The sound Tommy makes is nearly a growl. 

Adam laughs in relief. “I’ll stop doing that, I promise.”

“Prove it,” Tommy challenges. He’s not letting up at all, in his own gentle way.

“Keep reminding me if I forget. God, I want to touch every part of you.”

“Do it.”

“Every single fucking part.” This is no time for pussyfooting around.

“Do it.”

At long last, Adam takes Tommy at his word.

First the still-damp clothes have to come off, and the damned things fight back every step of the way, particularly the denim. Next Adam wins a brief argument about showering to warm up. Not long after that, while Adam is kneeling in the tub with Tommy’s gorgeous cock in his mouth, water cascading over him like rain, his hair plastered to his forehead, looking up to see Tommy’s hands grasping at the slick tile walls, Tommy’s eyes scrunched closed, biting his lip… well, it’s clear that Tommy changed his mind somewhere along the way. Showers and sex _do_ go together. Told ya.

Then Adam towels Tommy dry because he will never stop wanting to take care of him. Tommy lets him. Tommy likes it, going by the crooked smile on his lips. Adam is going to have to learn when it’s okay to be protective and when not to hover.

They drop the towels and run for the bed, snuggling in immediately. All that gloriously naked skin: Adam pulls Tommy close, tries to merge them into one being. He knows he has succeeded once he can’t tell which are his legs and which are Tommy’s. He wants to explore the small body but for now that can wait because he does _not_ want to let go. They fit together too perfectly.

“You feel amazing,” he whispers into Tommy’s ear, then kisses it.

Tommy wriggles. “Don’t laugh at me.”

“I wouldn’t. Why would I?” He gets that Tommy isn’t used to being intimate with someone but he would never laugh at him. With him, sure. Sex can be very amusing. 

“If I’m not good at this,” Tommy mumbles. 

“Pfft. You want to know something funny? I was a virgin until I was nineteen.”

“You were?”

“In high school I felt so lonely. I didn’t want to go out with girls but I didn’t know how to approach boys. I thought I was the only gay person in the school. I waited so long to find out how wrong I was.”

“Oh. I wish I’d been there.”

“To be my hero?”

“You said you wouldn’t laugh at me.” There’s a snicker in Tommy’s voice, though. “I was twenty.”

Twenty what? Oh. So they’re kind of on the same page, Adam thinks, stroking a hand down Tommy’s back. But of course Adam moved to Los Angeles after he came out to his parents, and found all the gay clubs and met other boys like himself and had plenty of friendly (and very safe, thanks for the lecture, Dad) sex. He doesn't want Tommy to follow his footsteps that way. He wants Tommy entirely for himself, forever. No sharing. Whether it’s fair or not. Also, that way Tommy won’t be able to compare gay sex with anyone else. Adam’s ego isn’t so big that it can survive that.

“Adam?”

“Yes, honey?” Adam’s hand wanders down to Tommy’s tiny ass. He can cover the whole thing with one hand, pretty much.

“Are we going to do it?”

“Do what?”

“It.”

It. Adam ponders. That could mean anything. He squeezes Tommy’s ass and Tommy emits a cute squeak. Ah. It. Okay then.

“We don’t have to do anything.”

“Yes, we do.”

“Tommy…”

“Adam!”

“We don’t have to do everything all at once.”

“What if I want to. Like, be closer.”

“We’re pretty close,” Adam argues. They’re plastered to each other, limbs entangled, not a hint of daylight between them from toes to hair.

“Closer.”

Adam huffs. “Turn over, then.”

“No.”

Adam extracts himself from Tommy’s octopus arms and legs, and props himself on his elbow. “It’ll be easier.” 

“Don’t care.” Tommy’s little face is stubborn.

“Or you could fuck me first.”

Tommy’s eyes open wide. “Maybe later,” he says, as though he hadn’t expected that to be on the menu.

“Okay, then. For your first time, I’m telling you it’s easier if you turn over.”

“Please.”

Adam can’t resist that. “Stubborn. You have to tell me if it doesn’t feel good.”

“What doesn’t feel good is I’m cold.”

“Are you telling me to hurry, cowboy?”

“I want my blanket back.”

Blanket means Adam. Adam’s smart enough to figure that out. “We can sleep together, or we can do _it_ ,” he says firmly. “Which is it?” He rubs a hand back and forth on Tommy’s chest to warm him a little. 

“Both.” Tommy reaches up tentatively and touches Adam’s shoulder. “You have so many freckles.”

Adam chortles. “I’m a natural redhead.”

“Noticed that in the shower.” Tommy smirks a little. 

“I need something. Don’t move.” Adam stopped bothering to keep condoms handy a long while back. He finds what he needs in the bathroom and hurries his ass back into the warm bed, bringing the supplies under the covers with him. 

“You know how beautiful you are?” he asks Tommy, leaning down to kiss the center of his chest. Tommy blushes and turns his head on the pillow. Adam lifts one of Tommy’s legs and places a small foot on his shoulder. “Keep it there.” 

“Awkward.”

“I know.” Adam grabs a spare pillow and pushes it under Tommy’s ass. “Like the man said, when it comes to sex the position is ridiculous.” He opens the lube one-handed and squelches it onto his fingers. “Good thing it feels so great.”

Tommy endures a finger in his ass for a brief moment, then grabs Adam’s pillow and throws it over his own face, anchoring it in place with his arms.

Adam stops what he’s doing. “Does it hurt?”

“Mmmph!”

He’s being as gentle as he can. “Baby, are you all right? We don’t have to do this.”

Tommy lifts the pillow and mock-glares. “Fuck you, keep going,” then slams the pillow back in place.

Wow. Bossy little thing. Who knew? Adam lucked out big-time. He chortles. “You’re something else, Tommy Joe.”

“Brrhshgh.”

Adam entertains the hope that their entire future sex life won’t involve a pillow over Tommy’s face. “I’m going on in, just warning you.”

He hears a suppressed giggle.

So he goes on in, ridiculous position notwithstanding. And that’s the most amazing thing. He never thought he’d be in this position, much as he wanted it from the moment he first saw Tommy. Waiting was the best thing ever because it’s so much more amazing, being in love. He’s going to wait a little longer, though, for Tommy to get used to it. He bends to kiss each small nipple, one after the other. 

Tommy fidgets and lifts the pillow just enough to say clearly, “I’m okay,” then back it goes.

Adam grins, turns his head to kiss Tommy’s ankle. “I love you, honey,” he says softly. “Love you. Thank you.”

“Ferwhgt?”

“For being you. For loving me.” He puts Tommy’s other leg around his own waist and gets an arm beneath Tommy to hold him. He pulls out and then moves back in. Tommy is breathing hard under the pillow. Adam does it again, starting a slow and steady rhythm. Just when he figures he’ll have to proceed with making love to a pillow, Tommy hurls the thing across the room and twines his arms around Adam’s neck. Adam goes right down, kissing Tommy’s open mouth, his closed eyelids.

“I don’t know,” Tommy whispers.

“What?” Adam whispers back.

“How to tell you. How I feel.”

“You don’t have to say it out loud. Just let me know it’s okay, that I'm not doing anything you don't want.”

Tommy nods.

Adam kisses him again, lets his head fall against Tommy’s collarbone, his lips against Tommy’s arched throat as he rocks them together under the warm covers while the rain chatters against the window.

He comes, but not Tommy. It’s going to take time to learn one another’s rhythms. Adam isn’t worried, so long as Tommy is clutching him close like he’ll never let go. Which is fine by Adam, he could live that way forever. He rolls them over on their sides, still inside, still together. 

“Tommy, I love you so totally. I’ll never ever _ever_ leave you, love. You are so amazing I can’t even describe it.” Adam’s blabbering. He can’t stop. “You are the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen and the sweetest person on the face of the planet. I don’t know how I got so lucky to have you. It would have been okay if we were just friends and I was ready to do that but then you said you love me and I thought I was going to die right then and… and you make me want to listen to music.”

Tommy slaps his bicep. 

Well, that stops the runaway after-sex chitchat. “Tommy?” He opens his eyes to find Tommy staring at him.

“What is that? Some cheesy new lyrics?” Tommy asks. “I could set that to music for you.”

Adam keeps a straight face as long as he can – about two seconds – and erupts into laughter.

Tommy smiles. “Also, there’s something in my ass.”

Who the fuck knew? “You’re going to turn into a holy terror, aren’t you, Tommy?”

Tommy has one small correction. “ _Un_ holy terror.”

* * *

Night comes earlier than usual with the overcast skies. The rain hasn’t let up, because it may not rain that often in southern California, but when it does, it truly pours. Adam puts on a long-sleeved tee and jeans and socks. In the bottom drawer of the dresser, he finds drawstring sweats and a tee-shirt that shrunk too much in the wash but is too cool to get rid of; he shoves them under the covers in the spot where he’d been sleeping, so they will warm up before Tommy puts them on.

He lights candles that his mother had bought for him on her last visit. The apartment glows with soft light. In the kitchen, he handles the pans and mugs carefully, trying not to make a racket.

It’s wonderfully quiet and domestic to be making tea for himself and hot chocolate for Tommy. 

Shuffling footsteps approach from the bedroom; Adam turns to see the sexiest thing ever, bedhead Tommy wearing Adam’s clothes, a sleepy, sheepish smile on his face.

“Come here, baby.” Adam opens his arms and Tommy walks right in and hugs Adam back. “Tomorrow,” Adam says, “how about we go and get Ronette and all her belongings and bring them here?”

Tommy nods vigorously against his chest.

“Plus your three tee-shirts and two pairs of jeans.”

Tommy snorfles. “And the Jag.”

“Let me think. That sounds noisy.”

Tommy tilts his face up and Adam looks down. “Package deal,” Tommy declares imperiously. 

“Oh, whatever.” Adam kisses the impish smile, then tucks Tommy’s head under his chin and rocks them soothingly. “I feel like,” Adam begins. It seems as though something is stuck in his throat. Like his heart, for instance. He swallows and continues. “I feel as though I’ve been waiting my whole life for you to show up.”

“I’m here,” Tommy murmurs. “I’m home.”

Tommy is so right about that. 

Home is Tommy, wherever he is.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time-stamp ficlet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Having felt like writing a bit more in this AU, I thought it would be nice to get inside Tommy’s head for a change. The whole story was in Adam’s head before. So… Tommy’s turn. Just a little snippet.

A KIND OF NICE APARTMENT IN THE VALLEY

Tommy can’t always figure out what Adam is thinking. It’s the most frustrating thing by far about his new life, not because Adam’s obtuseness annoys him, but because he wants to understand what Adam wants so that he, Tommy, can give it to him. Adam saved his life. Tommy’s pretty certain of that. He’ll never forget the audition. Adam sat there staring at him like a big friendly puppy.

The best thing in their new apartment, with its two bedrooms and big windows letting in sunshine and a view of the San Gabriel range, is the rocking chair. Tommy rocks back and forth. It’s one of his favorite things to do. It’s almost insanely hedonistic, something that was never permitted in his childhood. All the chairs in that Burbank house were straight-backed and stiff. Even the sofa cushions were like sitting on concrete. There was no give, no flexibility.

Adam, though. Adam’s got a lot of give. He gives space and love and peace. He’s squishily comfy just like a nice upholstered chair. Adam doesn’t like having love handles or whatever-the-fuck but secretly Tommy doesn’t mind one bit.

Tommy thinks all the time how different his life is now. In bed at night, wrapped up in Adam’s sweaty embrace, almost too uncomfortable, he relents and lets Adam crowd him anyway. He feels safe and treasured. So different from a year ago when he would have been lying on a thin mattress in a shelter, or even a bench in a park somewhere, afraid to fall asleep, whatever cash he had tucked into a hidden pocket and the guitar case practically glued to his side for fear of losing it.

Adam tells Tommy over and over how Tommy rescued himself but Tommy knows better. Tommy knows that no one else at that audition – even though they’re wonderful people and they’re his friends now – went looking for him when he disappeared. He was just another person wandering around Los Angeles, the kind you see everywhere except you don’t really see. He can only guess that Adam went looking for him because Adam felt what Tommy felt when they saw each other. He felt some odd and frightening connection. Frightening for Tommy, because other people scared him. Frightening because he couldn’t see a future for himself other than hiding and living off scraps. Mostly his goal was to avoid people and entanglements. He couldn’t figure out what Adam wanted from him, though. It scared him. For the longest time, Tommy couldn’t believe Adam cared.

It’s a fucking miracle that he saw the audition posting and decided to chance it. Not the kind of miracle his father the reverend went on about. Just an ordinary miracle of one person helping someone else when they had no reason to. The kind he’d read about in stories when he was little and still allowed to go to public school.

There’s another kind of miracle, right here and right now. He rocks back and forth in the rocking chair. Back and forth, back and forth. It’s quiet and peaceful and the little warm thing in his arms is sleeping. He never realized, but babies have a smell. A baby smell. It’s pretty nice. He presses his lips against Bernadette’s forehead. Her tiny eyelids flutter and then go still again. When Tommy puts his cheek to her mouth, he feels a tiny exhalation of breath.

Adam and his mom are out and about with Tommy’s sister. Because Leila is awesome that way. She’s off to some place that’s going to help Linda find an apartment and enroll in community college to learn some job skills.

Tommy hopes they all get back before Bernadette wakes up and pees or something, because he’s not very good yet at diapers. 

No smell. So far, so good.

He looks around the apartment again, feeling amazed that he’s in this clean, safe place, that he actually lives here. He sees Ronette lounging on a rag rug in a bar of sunlight. She stretches, yawns widely, blinks at Tommy, and curls up into a ball. Cats know how to enjoy the here and now, Tommy figures. There could be worse things than being reincarnated as a cat.

Footsteps pound up the outside steps and the door is flung open with a flourish.

“My three babies!” Adam hollers, grinning widely.

Shushing Adam never works, so Tommy doesn’t bother, just sighs as Bernadette starts to twitch. The quiet time was lovely but it’s over.

Adam picks up a complaining Ronette and rubs noses with her. “Hey, gorgeous,” he tells her. She mewls and touches his chin with her paw.

Who knew Adam would wind up being a cat person? Well, who knew Tommy would wind up loving a crazy dork like Adam?

Adam lets Ronette slither back to the floor. He leans over and kisses the baby’s forehead. 

Leila and Linda, having walked up the stairs rather than running, come inside and close the apartment door, shopping bags trailing everywhere. Linda takes Bernadette from Tommy, cuddling her and cooing.

“We got some clothes for me to wear for job interviews,” Linda says shyly.

“Let’s go try things on,” Leila suggests, aiming for one of the bedrooms and getting a quick hug from a happy Adam on the way. She gives Tommy and Adam a wink. “Ladies only.”

Linda’s smile lights up her face. Tommy is pretty certain that Leila will improve Linda’s taste in clothing, which until now has been mostly what Tommy thinks of as hideous housewife dresses. Linda follows Leila, Bernadette held securely in her arms.

Once the door to the bedroom closes, Adam says imperiously, “Up.”

Tommy stands. Adam scoops him up and sits down in the rocking chair, Tommy in his lap.

“What do you think I am, a baby?” Tommy whines, but he loves it. He snuggles his face into Adam’s neck.

“My baby,” Adam agrees, pressing Tommy against his chest and rocking gently. “Tell me something special,” he says quietly.

Tommy isn’t sure what Adam means. Special?

Ronette leaps onto the window embrasure and stretches luxuriously. From behind the closed bedroom door emerge the homey sounds of Linda and Leila talking. Outside, a dog barks.

“When you went to see your mom in San Francisco,” Tommy whispers, not sure why he’s whispering, except it seems private. “And you called me all the time.”

“Yeah?” Adam says softly, lips against Tommy’s hair.

“You wanted to talk to me. I never got talked to so much by anyone.”

“I love talking with you, Tommy baby. The rest of the world’s been missing out before now.”

Tommy snorts and elbows him. “That’s when.”

“When what?”

“When I knew.”

“Knew what?”

Tommy smacks Adam’s bicep with his fist. “You’re a crazy shit.”

Adam laughs. “I love you, too.”

Tommy snickers. “What do you love best?” he asks boldly.

Adam tilts up Tommy’s face. “This,” he says, and kisses him, softly at first and then deeply. 

Tommy feels warm all over, and just a bit alarmed because his sister and Adam’s mom are in the next room. When the kiss ends, he trails a finger on Adam’s cheek and looks into those altogether too close-up and incredibly beautiful blue eyes. 

“I’m scared,” Tommy says. He doesn’t elaborate but Adam knows what he means. Tommy is scared that it will all go away, that it’s just a dream that Tommy’s having, that Tommy doesn’t deserve something this wonderful.

Adam shakes his head fondly. “Nothing to be scared of. I’m with you.”

Tommy tucks his head down again, burrowing into Adam’s arms. “Tighter,” Tommy whispers.

Adam tightens his arms and squeezes hard.

“I can do that, baby,” Adam says.


End file.
